Kurt Goldstein: An Overview
By Shea Stevens. Last edited 11/24/23
This information was gathered primarily from chapter five of Anne Harrington’s excellent book, Reenchanted Science.
Kurt Goldstein’s holistic vision of the human as “organism” led him to pioneer humanistic psychology. Kurt Goldstein was a significant influence on Fritz Perls, and he also taught Laura Perls, two founders of gestalt therapy. His impact on the field of philosophy and psychology is extensive. Goldstein lived from 1878-1965.
Early Life
He was born in 1878 in Katowice, which was at the time part of the German Empire, now modern day Poland. His family was Jewish, he was the seventh of nine children. Ernst Cassirer, his cousin, sometimes visited and he would remain a friend of Goldstein’s the rest of his life. His father was a wealthy owner of a lumber yard and had little formal schooling, but saw education as important. The family were agnostic Jews (Harrington, 1996).
Young Goldstein was said to be quiet and serious, nicknamed “the professor.” Once he completed the classical education at the Humanistische Gymnasium in Breslau, he became interested in philosophy, particularly Kantian theory, but his father opposed it as not a good prospect to earn a living. His father eventually relented and Kurt took a year to study at Heidelberg, focusing on literature and philosophy, particularly neo-Kantianism and Geisteswissenschaft (Harrington, 1996).
Kurt Goldstein returned to Breslau to study medicine, focusing on neurology and psychiatry. In 1903 he received his M.D. at Breslau under the supervision of Carl Wernicke, who would remain a lifelong mentor to Goldstein. Surprising, as Wernicke held a more mechanistic view of brain science. Though Goldstein was moving into the field of medicine and neurology, he remained attached to the insights of literature and idealistic philosophy.
Years at Konigsberg
Though a humanist pioneer, his work and thought was not without stain and error. A monograph he published in 1913 on “race hygeine” showed him working through tensions in his internal allegiances (more information on this in Anne Harrington’s Reenchanted Science, 1996). In that same piece he wrote about the need to overcome his age’s newfound materialism, to resist the tendency in natural science to apply atomizing, cause-and-effect thinking to the realm of the human being. He wanted to preserve “the life of feeling.”
This monograph was based on public lectures he gave at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Konigsberg, where he had worked for six years. His autobiography says that his time at the clinic increased his distrust of intellectual formalism and scientism. He was frustrated by the dry approach to understanding mental disorders of Munich psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who emphasized inherited constitutional factors and overly focused on diagnosis and prognosis, and undervalued the potential of therapy. “Therapeutic nihilism,” as termed by its critics, was pervasive at the time. Goldstein’s work in establishing a holistic approach to medicine could be seen as a resistance to this therapeutic pessimism, and he later said this at a major conference in 1932 (Goldstein, 1933, p.143). His lifelong work could be seen as a response to a general sense of passive pessimism and nihilism in modern society.
“There are no easy cosmic consolations buried in Goldstein’s holistic narrative, but the natural world he discovered through his science did mandate an ethic that stressed, above all other values, courage of action in the service of personal meaningfulness.”
-Anne Harrington
Research and Teaching
In 1914, he moved to the Neurological Institute in Frankfurt am Main. That year Goldstein recruited gestalt psychologist Adhemar Gelb to staff his psychology department there for the diagnostic assessments and research at Goldstein’s hospital for brain-injured soldiers. Gelb would become an important assistant to Goldstein, and Goldstein would work and publish in close contact with the gestalt psychologists. In 1926, Fritz Perls became Goldstein's assistant for a year.
According to Ash, 1998, by 1927 Goldstein had begun to distance himself from gestalt theory, seeking to implement his organismic, holistic method. Goldstein’s holistic views certainly had strong similarities with the holism of gestalt theory, but he focused more on the organism in itself, the organism as a “self,” compared to the gestalt theorist’s focus on the organism-environment as a unified structure* (Ash, 1998, p. 281). Goldstein was more interested in viewing the organism, specifically the human being, as one whole. Gestalt theorists at the time, such as Kohler, still tended to view certain systems of the body as separate (Ash, 1998, p. 281-282). Goldstein moved to the University of Berlin in 1930 and headed the Neurological Clinic at Berlin-Moabit General Hospital.
*As a side note, I think this contrast reflects the core, subtle differences between the theoretical focus of gestalt therapy theory and person-centered theory, the latter of which is based on Goldstein’s concept of self-actualization. However, even within gestalt therapy theory over time some have chosen to focus more on the “self” as Goldstein did, and others focus more on the “self-as-process,” self defined at its contact boundary, which was the focus in Gestalt Therapy (1951).
Goldstein’s Philosophical Connections & Influences
Goldstein’s philosophy was informed by, and contributed to, his philosophical surroundings in Germany and beyond, intersecting with many important figures. Psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann owed him her concept of “hindrance of self-actualization.” Erich Fromm, her husband, also found inspiration in Goldstein’s existentialism for his work “Man for Himself” (1947).
Russian born phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, who published his Gottingen dissertation in the Gestalt journal Psychologische Forschung, studied under Goldstein in the 1920’s. Gurwitsch’s “Field of Consciousness” attempted to organize the work of Goldstein, the Gestaltists, William James, and Jean Piaget within a common phenomenological framework. In the 1930’s, Gurwitsch brought Goldstein’s work to the attention of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty arranged for a french translation of Goldstein’s Der Aufbau des Organismus to be published in the Bibliotheque de Philosophie series edited by Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Merleau-Ponty drew crucial ideas from Goldstein, especially in his book “The Structure of Behavior” but also in “Phenomenology of Perception” (1945). Goldstein’s ideas in his book The Organism, especially chapter 11, were the very same subject matter Merleau Ponty’s Structure of Behavior explores, on physicalism vs vitalism, structure, behavior, gestalt, and nature vs mind.
Goldstein’s influential relationship with phenomenology ran mutually in both directions. Goldstein’s concern with “essence” as part of organismic life was likely informed by Husserl. Like Husserl who was interested in looking at reality without bias or judgement, Goldstein sought “to develop a methodology for a theory-free, undistorted encounter with organismic existence.” Goldstein’s ideas on essence were nuanced and he resisted a strict essentialism, rejecting a metaphysical existence of essence (see The Organism ch 11).
“This, [the organism’s] being, is its raison d’etre, in line with the Goethean proposition: “the purpose of life is life itself.” All individual processes take their meaning from and are determined by this being. We describe this as [the organism’s] essence.”
-Goldstein, 1933, p.154
Goldstein’s principles were taken up and developed by theologian Paul Tillich. In their years together at Frankfurt, 1929-1933, the two organized seminars together, and their contact continued later while in exile. In 1959 Tillich acknowledged in his writing that Goldstein’s analysis of the “attitude toward the abstract” allowed him to imagine a biological grounding for the human ability to transform everything into a possible, and then to ask the question of that which cannot not be, the “ground of being.” Theologian Kent Alan Meyer suggests that Tillich was even more indebted to Goldstein that Tillich acknowledged. Tillich’s focus on facing existential anxiety of “nonbeing” mirrored Goldstein’s discussion of “catastrophe”, and they share a focus on 1) the courage to reaffirm being, 2) the significance of “essence” as source of identity and meaning, and 3) the connection between actualization and suffering.
Exile, “The Organism,” and Moving to America
Arrested in 1933 when Hitler came into power, and forced into exile, Goldstein was supported by The Rockefeller Foundation to escape to Amsterdam. He wrote his main work, “Der Aufbau des Organismus,” there in 1934. It was published in America in 1939 entitled “The Organism.” In this work he went beyond the idea of an organism regaining balance after stimulation; he conceptualized the existence of “the drive to self-actualization.” His book is based on the principles of gestalt psychology but he expands on them from whole figures in perception to whole organisms. Goldstein was critical of gestalt theory’s limitations while he built on the theory, asserting that a “good Gestalt” is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. He said, “The whole, the ‘Gestalt,’ has always meant to me the whole organism and not the phenomena in one field.” In The Organism, Goldstein applied the figure-ground principle, suggesting that the whole organism serves as the “ground” for the self forming the “figure.” Goldstein’s work critiques oversimplified behaviorist stimulus-response theory. Kurt Goldstein, in summary, wanted to prioritize the existence of a “self" and its tendency to actualize its capacities, its whole potential, in any given situation.
There was growing tension in the 1930’s as differences between Goldstein and the Gestalt theorists arose. Koffka wrote in 1938 that Max Wertheimer bore “a moral grudge” against Goldstein for his “unfair” portrayal of gestalt theory in The Organism (Ash, 1998, p. 282). Whatever differences or personal tensions existed, Goldstein’s organismic theory would be instrumental to the gestalt therapy theory of Fritz and Laura Perls. The efforts to expand on gestalt theory by Goldstein and Kurt Lewin were pushing gestalt theory in ways that would eventually feed back into the theory’s development, at least insofar as it would inform the “gestalt therapy” theory founded by the Perls.
Goldstein moved to the USA in 1935, where he held several professorships: 1936 Columbia University, 1938-39 Harvard University, 1940-1945 Tufts Medical College. In the 1950s, his "holistic approach" was foundational to the establishment of humanist psychology. His original concept of self-actualization would be instrumental to the work of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, among others.
Quotes from “The Organism”
“We have said that life confronts us in living organisms. But as soon as we attempt to grasp them scientifically, we must take them apart, and this taking apart nets us a multitude of isolated facts which offer no direct clue to that which we experience directly in the living organism. Yet we have no way of making the nature and behavior of an organism scientifically intelligible other than by its construction out of facts obtained in this way. We thus face the basic problem of all biology, possibly of all knowledge. The question can be formulated quite simply: What do the phenomena, arising from the isolating procedure, teach us about the ‘essence’ (the intrinsic nature) of an organism? How, from such phenomena, do we come to an understanding of the behavior of the individual organism?” (The Organism)
“We do not construct the architecture of the organism by a mere addition of brick to brick; rather we try to discover the actual Gestalt or the intrinsic structure of this building, a Gestalt from which the phenomena, which were formerly equivocal, would now become intelligible. ... [We look] for an idea, a reason in knowledge, by virtue of which all particulars can be tested for their agreement with the principle — an idea on the basis of which all particulars become intelligible, if we consider the conditions of their origin.” (The Organism)
“[Goethe] speaks of two different modes of thinking. ... One clings to a dissective attitude, and the other makes the idea the guiding principle. One corresponds to an analytical discursive, the other to an organismic principle. ... It seems to us that a competent nature scientist, especially a biologist, must possess the faculty of combining both points of view, although he may at times not admit it. ... Sufficient understanding can only be gained when these two forms of cognition influence and supplement each other continuously. Was this not true of Goethe himself?” (The Organism)
“Biological knowledge is not advanced by simply adding more and more individual facts. In the process of biological understanding, it is not true that facts which gradually become included in the ‘whole’ as parts, can be evaluated simply quantitatively, so that our knowledge becomes the more firm, the more parts we are able to determine. On the contrary each single fact has always a qualitative significance. This single, new fact may perhaps revolutionize the entire conception based on former findings, and demand an entirely new idea, in the light of which the old facts may have to be evaluated in a radically different way.” (The Organism)
“True, we can dismember [the organism], so that we construe ‘parts’; but this is only the case when we actually take it apart, i.e. split it up into its physico-chemical elements. In every physiological dissection we create a mixture of ‘part elements’ and real ‘whole members.’ It is our task to discriminate, in this mass of phenomena, the true ‘members’ from the artificial ‘parts’.... One overlooks that the organism is, of course, articulate (differentiated into members) but does not consist of members.” (The Organism)
References:
Ash, Mitchell G. 1998. “Gestalt Psychology in German Culture 1890-1967. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 16.
Goldstein, Kurt. 1995. The Organism. Zone Books, New York.
Harrington, Anne. 1996. “Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler.” Princeton. Chapter five.
Kreft, Gerald. https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/75156722/Kurt_Goldstein Accessed 11/21/23.
The Nature Institute. https://www.natureinstitute.org/about/kurt-goldstein Accessed 11/22/23