Kurt Goldstein

Kurt Goldstein ( November 6, 1878 in Katowice, † September 19, 1965 in New York), was a German and later American neurologist and psychiatrist. He is considered a pioneer in neuropsychology and psychosomatics.

Life

Kurt Goldstein was born the seventh of nine children of a Jewish family in Katowice, at that time the Upper Silesia. His father was Abraham Goldstein (1836-1902), his mother Rosalie Cassirer ( 1845-1911 ). After attending grammar school in Breslau he first studied philosophy and literature in Heidelberg. A year later, he broke off his studies and returned to Breslau, where he among other things studied medicine at Carl Wernicke and dealt (structure of the nervous system ) in the laboratory of the Pathological Institute of the neuroanatomy. 1903 appeared his first publication in "Contributions to the history of development of the human brain " and Kurt Goldstein was awarded the honorary degree for work, " The composition of the posterior columns " ( nerves that run from the spinal cord to the brain ). In the same year he left Breslau and drove to Frankfurt am Main.

In 1905 he married Ida Zuckermann and had with her three daughters. In 1935, he married Eva Rothmann. From this second marriage two children were born.

From 1935 and until his death he lived and Goldstein worked in the USA, also at Harvard University, and in 1940 took U.S. citizenship to. Kurt Goldstein died three weeks after a stroke.

Career

From 1906 to 1914 he worked in the psychiatric clinic of Königsberg. Here he learned that later became known as a psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm- Reichmann know who subsequently followed him to Frankfurt. 1914 Goldstein was invited by Ludwig Edinger and was head of the neuropathological department at the Neurological Institute Senckenberg in Frankfurt am Main. During the First World War in 1916 he built together with Adhemar yellow, the Institute for the study of the sequelae of brain injury as a clinic for brain-damaged soldiers, which he directed until 1930. In 1923 he was appointed professor of neurology at the University of Frankfurt. Goldstein was concerned with the fundamental questions of biology, including psychology and worked closely with the Gestalt psychologists yellow together.

About Fritz Perls, who worked for a year in 1926 as assistant physician at Goldstein, and Perls' future wife Laura Perls, who holds a doctorate in Adhemar yellow in Gestalt psychology, were Goldstein's research a fundamental part of Gestalt therapy.

Because he - with scarce municipal funds, and the preference of another high school teacher ( the neurologist and psychiatrist Karl Kleist ) - the establishment of a separate bed department was denied, changed Goldstein to Berlin in 1930, where he was able to take a newly opened neurological department at Berlin's Moabit Hospital.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Goldstein was arrested by members of the SA, abused in the SA prison Papestraße and forced to emigrate. He fled by train to Zurich and after a short stay on to Amsterdam. The Rockefeller Foundation supported him for a year in Amsterdam, where he wrote his major work The structure of the organism wrote, which was published in 1934 in German language, but only in 1939 was published in English.

1935 Goldstein emigrated to the United States. From 1936 he worked as a clinical professor of neurology at Columbia, New York, without content and in 1940-1945 as a clinical professor of neurology at Tufts College Medical School, Boston.

Creation

His principal work is entitled The structure of the organism (1934 ). His life's work was closely associated since its early joint research in Frankfurt and Berlin with the Gestalt psychologists Adhemar yellow and the co- editorship of Psychological Research ( with Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka ) with the Gestalt psychology or the Gestalt theory. Goldstein was among the founders of humanistic psychology and was co-editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Trained in philosophical clarity ( through study and discussions with his cousin Ernst Cassirer ) was Goldstein due to its spectacular treatment results in his brain-injured patients, an early critic of an oriented exclusively on topographic brain maps understanding of brain function and spatially rigid localized function centers (eg the Language Centre ): In the symptoms of the treated brain injuries he saw not the usual pathological failures, but he interpreted it as an attempt of the organism as a whole to find a new balance in läsionsbedingt reduced brain power. Because of its assumption that the location of a brain lesion is not identical with the location of brain function, completely new approaches to psychological analysis and treatment of brain- injured people arise. Ultimately they have done in support of neuropsychology as a new scientific discipline a decisive contribution. The actuality of the holistic approach of Goldstein is also documented by the recent new edition of his major work in English with an introduction by Oliver Sacks.

In his major work, Goldstein called for a holistic method of researching the processes of life and applied it to himself on the organism. It constituted, inter alia, the so-called organismic balance and the Critique of behavioral reflex arc theory ( the simple stimulus-response pattern ), the focus of his work. He noted: " A closer observation shows that the successful end to a stimulus response can not only vary, but that the process is never depleted in the isolated reaction, but rather, always in a different way other areas, indeed the whole organism in the reaction. involved "On the organismic self- regulation of the organism in the interaction with the environment, he said, inter alia: For the organism is the necessity that" any, set by the environmental stimuli change in the organism in a given time to equilibrate again, that the organism in those middle ' state of arousal, which corresponds to its essence, this adequately ' is again, back passes. " of particular importance here is that Goldstein compensation not as a return to a " zero point ", ie an equilibrium in the form of a " relaxation " of course, but of a "medium " state of arousal as a " normal " state emanates.

Goldstein also dealt extensively with the concept of self-realization. He noted that the organism is endeavoring to maintain some form of interaction with the environment in which he can realize his nature according to most adequately. He later called self-realization This tendency towards realization of his being. By " nature " Goldstein understands the peculiarities of the organism associated his individuality and the "maintenance of the relative constancy of the organism."

Goldstein participated in exile but also initiated by Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm multidisciplinary study of the authoritarian personality.

Writings

• ( with Adhemar yellow as ed.): Psychological analysis of pathological brain cases the basis of studies brain injured. Vol 1, Springer, Berlin 1918
• Selected Papers / Selected Writings. Edited by Aron Gurwitsch, Else M. Goldstein Haudek, William E. Haudek. With an introduction by Aron Gurwitsch. Nijhoff, The Hague 1971; contains, inter alia, The symptom, its origins and importance for our conception of the structure and the function of the nervous system (1925 ), pp. 126-153
• About Aphasia (1927 ), pp. 154-230
• The Problem of Anxiety (1927 ), pp. 231-262