{"product_id":"9780942299977","title":"The Organism","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ewith an introduction by Oliver Sacks\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  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 range of application of the \"holistic\" or  \"organismic\" research program that has since become a standard part of  biological thought.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e    In the course of his studies of brain-damaged soldiers during World War I,  Goldstein became aware of the inability of contemporary biology and medicine to  explain both the impact of such injuries and the astonishing adjustments that  patients made to them. He began to challenge atomistic approaches that dealt  with \"localized\" symptoms, insisting instead that an organisim must be analyzed  in terms of the totality of its behavior and interaction with its surrounding  milieu. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e    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 which it could manage by a  redistribution of its reduced energies, thus reclaiming as much wholeness as  new circumstances allowed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e    Goldstein's theses in \u003ci\u003eThe Organism\u003c\/i\u003e have had an important impact on  philosophical and psychological thought throughout this century, as can be seen  in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Canguilhem, Ernst Cassirer, and  Ludwig Binswanger. In the words of Oliver Sacks: \"All that Goldstein observed  and brooded over -- levels of organization of the nervous system, health,  disease, adaptation, reconstruction -- has once again come to the fore, with  the advent of new conceptual and technical tools to approach these. The global  theory that Goldstein and Lashley and the Gestaltists sought may now have  emerged in Edelman's theory of neural Darwinism and his concept of the brain as  a sort of society, in which every part is dynamically connected with every  other.\"  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eZone Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47034536558832,"sku":"9780942299977","price":28.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780942299977_p0.jpg?v=1763872869","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780942299977","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}