As someone who has a lifelong interest in Einsteinian Physics, Psychology, and the development of concepts across time, reading this text is exciting to me because it combines them all together in one volume. This table of contents might explain better:
PRINCIPLES OF TOPOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY BY KURT LEWIN
Professor of Child Psychology, Iowa Child-Welfare Research Station, University of Iowa
1936
PART I. THE TASK OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF TOPOLOGICAL AND VECTOR PSYCHOLOGY
I. THE PRESENT STATE OF PSYCHOLOGY
II. FORMULATION or LAW AND REPRESENTATION OF SITUATION
Law and individual case The constructive representation of the situation
Person and environment; the life space
Ways in which the life space is represented.
III. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT REPRESENTING LIFE SPACE
The life space as the totality of possible events Inventories and systems of behavior
Constructive procedure:
Summary Good and poor abstraction; the method of approximation.
IV. CONTENT AND EXTENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE SPACE
Appearance and reality in psychology
Experience and psychological existence
What is real is what has effects
Phenomenal facts and physics
Life situation and momentary situation
Quasi-physical, quasi-social, and quasi-conceptual facts within the life space
The quasi-physical facts
The quasi-social facts
The quasi-conceptual facts
Influences by way of perception and “gross somatic” influences.
V. CAUSAL INTERCONNECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY
The historical and the systematic concept of causality Existence, temporal and causal relationships
The principle of “concreteness”
The relational character of causal facts
The principle of “contemporaneity” Past and future; the unreal and the indeterminate in the life space
Existence and temporal determination of a psychological fact and its content
Content as a property
The indeterminate.
VI. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE SPACE AS SPACE IN THE SENSE OF MATHEMATICS
Examples of space-like relationships in the life space
Space of free movement; locomotion, forces
Regions within the person;
The mathematical concept of space
Topological space
Metrical space
The application of the concept of space and physicalism.
VII. PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS
Problems of pure mathematics and problems of coordination
The instability of psychological situations
Necessary conditions for the application of metrical and topological concepts to the life space
Space and dynamics.
The history of the concept of space in physics and psychology
The fundamental concepts of dynamics.
VIII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLDS AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Physical and psychological space
The singleness of the physical world and the plurality of the psychological worlds
The physical world as a dynamically closed unity and the psychological worlds as dynamically unclosed unities.
IX. MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY
Concept, picture, and symbol
Concept and model Physiological theories of psychological processes
Representation and explanation.
PART II. TOPOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
A. CONCEPTS or TOPOLOGY WHICH ARE FUNDAMENTAL FOR PSYCHOLOGY
X. CONCEPTS OF TOPOLOGY FUNDAMENTAL FOR PSYCHOLOGY
The concept of region.
The connected region
Closed and open regions
Limited and unlimited regions
Simply and multiply connected regions
Jordan curve, boundary, path
Foreign regions.
B. TOPOLOGY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT
XI. PSYCHOLOGICAL REGIONS, LOCOMOTIONS, AND COMMUNICATIONS
Coordinating definitions
The psychological region
Psychological locomotion Being inside or outside of a region
The inner structure of a psychological region
Determination of the connectedness of regions
Nonconnected regions
Multiply connected regions
Limited and closed regions
Representation as path or as more than one-dimensional region
Representation as point or as more than one-dimensional region
Locomotions of a surrounding field
Thing and medium.
XII. BOUNDARIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL REGIONS
Definition and determination of psychological boundaries –
Sharpness of a boundary; boundary zones
Dynamic properties of psychological boundaries
Barriers Boundaries which affect communication
Boundary zones which can be passed only with difficulty
Zones of undetermined quality.
XIII. THE RELATIVE POSITION OF Two REGIONS
Foreign regions
Overlapping regions; the relative weight of situations
Difficulties in representing the relative position of two regions
The two principal possibilities for the representation of the inaccessibility of a point
Topological and dynamical aspects of the representation of limitations
Discrete paths and their totality
Homogeneous and differentiated barriers; approach and withdrawal Barriers and adits.
XIV. STRUCTURAL CHANGES
Differentiation, integration, and restructuring
Changes of structure and locomotion
Changes of magnitude and of distance
Dynamic conditions of structural changes; fluidity, elasticity, plasticity.
XV. THE LIFE SPACE AS FINITELY STRUCTURED SPACE
C. TOPOLOGY OF THE PERSON
XVI. THE PERSON AS A DIFFERENTIATED REGION IN THE LIFE SPACE
XVII. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND COORDINATING DEFINITIONS FOR THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PERSON
Coordinating definitions for environment and for person
Dynamic dependency Boundaries and boundary zones
Remarks about strong and weak gestalten;
Gestalten with different degrees of dynamic unity
Dynamic properties of personal regions
Tension Groups of tension systems
Structure of the person Inner-personal regions and the motor-perceptual region;
Central and peripheral inner-personal strata
Individual differ- ences in the structure of the person
The degree of differentiation of the person
The kind of structure and the function of the part regions
The connection between dynamic and topological factors.
D. DIMENSIONS OF THE LIFE SPACE
XVIII. THE DIMENSIONS OF THE LIFE SPACE
Mathematics of dimensions
The dimensions of the psychological environment
Reality
Degrees of irreality
Problems of dimensions of the person
The differentiation of the life space in the dimension reality-irreality.