foreword by Oliver Sacks Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) was already an                  established neuropsychologist when he emigrated from Germany to the United States in                  the 1930s. This book, his magnum opus and widely regarded as a modern classic in                  psychology and biology, grew out of his dissatisfaction with traditional natural                  science techniques for analyzing living beings. It offers a broad introduction to                  the sources and ranges of application of the "holistic" or "organismic" research                  program that has since become a standard part of biological thought.Goldstein was                  especially concerned with the breakdown of organization and the failure of central                  controls that take place in catastrophic responses to situations such as physical or                  mental illness. But he was equally attuned to the amazing powers of the organism to                  readjust to such catastrophic losses, if only by withdrawal to a more limited range                  that it could manage by a redistribution of its reduced energies, thus reclaiming as                  much wholeness as new circumstances allowed.Goldstein's theses in The Organism have                  had an important impact on philosophical and psychological thought throughout the                  twentieth century, as evidenced in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges                  Canguilhem, Ernst Cassirer, and Ludwig Binswanger.

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