The other person was Kurt Goldstein.  Born in 1878, he received his MD from the University of Breslau in 1903.  He went to teach at the Neurological Institute of the University of Frankfurt, where he met the founders of Gestalt psychology.

He went to Berlin to be a professor there, and then went on to New York City in 1935.  There, he wrote The Organism in 1939, and later Human Nature in the Light of Pathology in 1963.  He died in 1965.

Goldstein developed a holistic view of brain function, based on research that showed that people with brain damage learned to use other parts of their brains in compensation.  He extended his holism to the entire organism, and postulated that there was only one drive in human functioning, and coined the term self-actualization.  Self-preservation, the usual postulated central motive, he said, is actually pathological!

Goldstein and his idea of self-actualization influence quite a few young personality theorists and therapists.  Among them would be Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow, founders of the American humanistic psychology movement.

© Copyright C. George Boeree, 2000