Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 – September 19, 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who created a holistic theory of the organism. Educated in medicine, Goldstein studied under Carl Wernicke and Ludwig Edinger where he focused on neurology and psychiatry. His clinical work helped inspire the establishment of The Institute for Research into the Consequences of Brain Injuries. Goldstein was forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power, because of his Jewish heritage. After being displaced, Goldstein wrote The Organism (1934). This focused on patients with psychological disorders, particularly cases of schizophrenia and war trauma, and the ability of their bodies to readjust to substantial losses in central control. His holistic approach to the human organism produced the principle of self actualization, defined as the driving force that maximizes and determines the path of an individual. Later, his principle influenced Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He was the co-editor of Journal of Humanistic Psychology.
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
👉 Kurt Goldstein in the context of 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. The idea of an explicitly "organismic theory" dates at least back to the publication of Kurt Goldstein's The organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man in 1934. Organismic theories and the "organic" metaphor were inspired by organicist approaches in biology. The most direct influence from inside psychology comes from Gestalt psychology. This approach is often contrasted with mechanistic and reductionist perspectives in psychology.
Kurt Goldstein in the context of Self-actualization
Self-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfilled, and is recognised in psychological teaching as the peak of human needs. Maslow later added the category self-transcendence (which, strictly speaking, extends beyond one's own "needs").
Self-actualization was coined by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential: "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as [...] the drive of self-actualization." Carl Rogers similarly wrote of "the curative force in psychotherapy – man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities [...] to express and activate all the capacities of the organism."