A Whisper of Espionag

Wolfgang Kohler is renowned as one of the founders of Gestalt psychology and as the author of The Mentality of Apes , which detailed his experiments with simians on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, from 1914 to 1920. In this expose, Ley, professor of psychology at the State University of New York, shrilly claims to have uncovered a secret, one revealed to him by Kohler's chief assistant on Tenerife: the psychologist was a German spy during World War I. The author's investigations in England, East and West Germany and elsewhere in Europe confirmed for him that Kohler had served the German military by building, maintaining and operating a concealed radio that contributed to that country's war effort. Readers will consider that the jury is still out on the case, and that this overpadded book would have been more effective as a magazine article. (Jan.)