Fritz Heider: Philosopher and Psychologist

Abstract

Fritz Heider was a wanderer, someone who liked to survey and take the measure of whatever he encountered. In his formative years, he was a wanderer in the geographical sense — hiking in his beloved Austrian mountains and traveling throughout much of Europe. In his professional years, he was a wanderer in the intellectual sense — taking daily walks for the purpose of analyzing a difficult concept or conducting a thought experiment. Because he was rarely in a hurry and would take the time to look more closely and deliberate more thoroughly than most of his peers, Heider was able to achieve profound insights about essential aspects of human behavior and experience. There are few psychologists who have had more influence on their field than Fritz Heider. There are also few psychologists whose ideas have been so often underestimated and misrepresented. In this essay we follow the development of Heider’s contributions to psychology along the lines of his own life path — from philosophy to psychology, from Europe to America. By tracing the development and interrelation of Heider’s ideas we hope to emphasize their originality and scope and speak out against the sometimes narrow reading of Heider’s work.

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