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Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 - September 19, 1965) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 neurologist and psychiatrist who was a pioneer in modern neuropsychology. He created a holistic theory of the organism based on Gestalt theory
Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holism, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is different from the sum of its parts....
 which deeply influenced the development of Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy

Gestalt therapy is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation....
. His most important book in German Der Aufbau des Organismus (1934) has been published again in English: The Organism (1995) with an introduction by Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, Doctor of Medicine, Royal College of Physicians, Order of the British Empire , is a British neurologist residing in New York City....
.

Goldstein was co-editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Goldstein was born in Katowice
Katowice

Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Klodnica and Rawa river rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about 50 km from the Silesian Beskids and about 100 km from Sudetes....
, Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 in 1878 into a large Jewish family.






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Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 - September 19, 1965) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 neurologist and psychiatrist who was a pioneer in modern neuropsychology. He created a holistic theory of the organism based on Gestalt theory
Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holism, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is different from the sum of its parts....
 which deeply influenced the development of Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy

Gestalt therapy is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation....
. His most important book in German Der Aufbau des Organismus (1934) has been published again in English: The Organism (1995) with an introduction by Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, Doctor of Medicine, Royal College of Physicians, Order of the British Empire , is a British neurologist residing in New York City....
.

Goldstein was co-editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Biography

Kurt Goldstein was born in Katowice
Katowice

Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Klodnica and Rawa river rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about 50 km from the Silesian Beskids and about 100 km from Sudetes....
, Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 in 1878 into a large Jewish family. After his initial education at the gymnasium, he briefly studied philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 at the University of Heidelberg before moving to the University of Breslau where he studied medicine. At Breslau, Goldstein served as a laboratory assistant to Ludwig Edinger
Ludwig Edinger

Ludwig Edinger was an influential Germany anatomist and neurologist and co-founder of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main....
 and studied under Carl Wernicke. Goldstein ran a small neurology clinic, and after Edinger's death, assumed the role of professor of neurology.

Following World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, Goldstein took advantage of the large number of traumatic brain injuries at the clinic and established The Institute for Research into the Consequences of Brain Injuries. It was here that he developed his theory of brain-mind relationships.

In 1930, Goldstein accepted a position at the University of Berlin. In 1933, the Nazi National Socialist Party came to power and Goldstein was arrested and imprisoned in a basement. After a week, he was released on the condition that he would agree to leave the country immediately and never return.

For the next year, he lived in Amsterdam
Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the Capital of the Netherlands and List of cities in the Netherlands with over 100,000 people of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands of North Holland in the west of the country....
, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D....
, and wrote his master opus, The Organism.

Goldstein emigrated to the USA in 1935 and became a citizen of the US in 1940. His wife Eva Rothmann was the daughter of Berlin neuroanatomist Max Rothmann
Max Rothmann

Max Rothmann was a German neuroanatomist and physiologist who was a native of Berlin....
.

See also

  • Neuropsychology
    Neuropsychology

    Neuropsychology is the applied scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors....
  • Organismic theory
    Organismic theory

    Organismic theories in psychology are a family of holistic psychological theories which tend to stress the organization, unity, and integration of human beings expressed through each individual's inherent growth or developmental tendency....
  • Gestalt Psychology
    Gestalt psychology

    Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holism, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is different from the sum of its parts....
  • Humanistic psychology
    Humanistic psychology

    Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It is explicitly concerned with the human dimension of psychology and the human context for the development of psychological theory....


Selected Works


Books/Monographs

  • Goldstein, Kurt. (1940). Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Goldstein, Kurt; Scheerer, Martin.(1941): Abstract and Concrete Behavior: An Experimental Study With Special Tests. In: Psychological Monographs, ed. by John F. Dashell, Vol. 53/1941, No. 2 (whole No. 239), S. 1-151.
  • Goldstein, Kurt. (1942) After effects of brain injuries in war. New York: Grune & Stratton.
  • Goldstein, Kurt., Hanfmann, E., Rickers-Ovsiankina (1944). Case Lanuti: Extreme Concretization of Behavior Due to Damage of the Brain Cortex. In: Psychological Monographs, ed. by John F. Dashell, Vol. 57/1944, No. 4 (whole No. 264), S. 1-72.
  • Goldstein, Kurt., Scheerer, M., Rothmann, E. (1945). A Case of “Idiot Savant”: An Experimental Study of Personality Organization. In: Psychological Monographs, ed. by John F. Dashell, Vol. 58/1945, No. 4 (whole No. 269), S. 1-63.
  • Goldstein, Kurt. (1948). Language and Language Disturbances: Aphasic symptom complexes and their significance for medicine and theory of language. New York: Grune & Stratton.
  • Goldstein, Kurt. (1967). Selected writings. ed., Aron Gurwitsch, Else M. Goldstein.


External links



Two articles that discuss Goldstein's influence on and contribution to Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy

Gestalt therapy is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation....
:
  • Achim Votsmeier:
  • Allen R. Barlow: