Kurt Goldstein

Kurt Goldstein (1878 to 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who created a holistic theory of the organism and is counted an early pioneer of neuropsychology. Born into a Jewish family in Kattowitz, he studied philosophy and literature at Heidelberg and medicine at Breslau under Carl Wernicke, took his medical degree at 25, and worked with Ludwig Edinger at the neurological institute in Frankfurt. After the First World War he treated soldiers with brain injuries and founded an institute for research into the consequences of brain injuries with the gestalt psychologist Adhémar Gelb, and his observations of how patients readjust after losing central control led him to hold that the organism acts as a whole and to name self-actualization as its driving force. Forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power, he wrote The Organism in 1934. His ideas influenced Gestalt therapy, through his assistant Fritz Perls, and Abraham Maslow, and he served as co-editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.