Kurt Goldstein

An introduction to the blind-spot in medicine: human existence is systematically left out of healthcare. Two stories are told that introduce this blind-spot. The first is that of Kurt Goldstein, the WWI German neuropsychiatrist who describes a crisis in modern medicine. The second is that of Médard Boss, a WWII Swiss neuropsychiatrist that finds that medicine has trained him poorly to treat problems of meaning and existence. Time is spent differentiating existential health psychology from health psychology and complementary or alternative medical models.

Complicities and ambivalences of psychiatry: Münsterlingen and the
1954 feast of fools
In March 1954, Foucault visited the psychiatric asylum of Münsterlingen
(Canton Thurgau), on the Swiss side of Lake Constance. Münsterlingen
was the chosen place of activity for well-known psychiatrists, including
Hermann Rorschach (1910-1913), and it became famous in the history of
psychiatry especially through the work of Roland Kuhn, who was active in
the asylum from 1939 to 1979. Kuhn was an expert in the Rorschach psychodiagnostic test, as well as the discoverer of the first antidepressant in the early 1950s. He was also very close to Ludwig Binswanger, whose anthropological approach to mental illness had a strong influence on his own psychiatric practice. It is precisely in order to meet Kuhn and Binswanger that the young Foucault went to Switzerland, at a time when he was interested in philosophical anthropology and “existential psychopathology”. Foucault’s visit took place during the Carnival at the asylum, when the patients leave the hospital wearing the masks that they have made up and created.

This is a chapter from a book on the contents of the original online journal for gestalt therapy, Gestalt!.  This chapter describes one perspective on the period of thought and the ground leading to the emergence of contemporary gestalt therapy.

Questo saggio intende chiarire la genealogia del concetto di dispositivo in Foucault contro l’interpretazione avanzata da Agamben (2006), il quale riduce, via Hegel, il dispositivo biopolitico foucaultiano unicamente alla dispositio teologica, ovvero all’idea di piano divino della provvidenza della prima Cristianità. Al contrario, in questo saggio viene fatto notare che quando Foucault, nel 1975, introduce per la prima volta l’idea di dispositivo di biopotere come progetto normativo, egli si rifà alla nozione di normatività sociale del suo maestro Canguilhem. Il dispositivo viene quindi tracciato filologicamente e teoreticamente alla definizione di normatività che Foucault trae dall’opera di Canguilhem Il normale e il patologico (1966) e all’uso del termine ‘dispositivo’ da parte dello stesso Canguilhem nel saggio “Macchina e Organismo” (1952). Entrambe queste due filiazioni procedono dalla nozione di normatività organica che Canguilhem adotta a sua volta dal neurologo ebreo-tedesco Kurt Goldstein, ovvero da una tradizione della Lebensphilosophie che appare incompatibile con la tesi teologica di Agamben. In conclusione, la genealogia del normativo che viene riscoperta nella storia del termine ‘dispositivo’ rivela ancora una volta una questione centrale nel dibattito sulla biopolitica, ovvero il potere normativo del soggetto e, in particolare, la sua costituente abnormalità.

This essay clarifies the genealogy of the term and concept of dispositif in Foucault against a recent interpretation introduced by Agamben, one which reduces the biopolitical dispositif to the idea of the theological dispositio. On the contrary, this essay argues that Foucault was influenced by his master Canguilhem's notion of socio-organic normativity, when in 1975 he introduced the idea of the dispositif of biopower as a normative project. The dispositif is then traced back to the definition of social normativity that Foucault takes from Canguilhem's The Normal and the Pathological (1966) and to the use of the term dispositif by Canguilhem himself in the essay " Machine and Organism " (1952). Both these lineages proceed from the notion of organic normativity that Canguilhem adopts from a tradition of Lebensphilosophie that appears to be incompatible with Agamben's theological thesis.

Modern psychiatry, as represented by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), and phenomenology, as developed by Edmund Husserl, began around the same time, namely, during the last decades of the 19th century. Moreover, psychiatry and phenomenology have always shared a common goal: they have both sought detailed descriptions of human experience. This communality of goals has repeatedly led psychiatrists to turn to phenomenology for aid in explicating mental life. For many psychiatrists it has seemed that phenomenology offered a method that could help them better understand and conceptualize the experiences of their patients. As a result, psychiatrists have utilized various phenomenological approaches just as phenomenologists have explored subjects in psychiatry.

The history of this relationship has remained ambiguous, however. Frequently a gap has yawned between the broad theoretical perspectives adapted from phenomenology and the needs of clinical practice. Furthermore, psychiatrists-who are often trained in the biological and natural sciences-may feel disinclined to delve deeply into explorations of the subjective when these explorations appear to them to remain too abstract or metaphysical. And, returning the compliment, phenomenologists have usually exhibited a profound reluctance to ascribe centrality to biological and naturalistic perspectives. In the post-World War II years, impressive progress in empirical research has provided physicians with powerful means for diagnosis and treatment, for example, with psychopharmacology; because psychiatrists are always pragmatists at heart, these new insights have tended to supplant phenomenological insights.

More recently, the relationship has grown more complicated, and these complexities offer hope of a revitalized cross-fertilization between psychiatry and phenomenology. On the one hand, empirical research in psychiatry continues at an even more rapid pace. On the other hand, many physicians and patients are more aware of the gaps, inadequacies, and even untoward consequences of the one-sidedness of these new developments. This has spurred a turn towards holistic medicine, wellness, and environmental medicine that is more congenial to phenomenological views. Moreover, there is a growing recognition that phenomenological and neurobiological perspectives can no longer oppose one another; when properly conceived, each will strengthen the other. We shall first sketch a brief history of the relationships between phenomenology and psychiatry. Subsequently, we shall delineate possible directions that future inquiry might take.

The author revisits neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein's (1934/1995, 1963) concept of self-actualization. It is argued that the interdisciplinary field of biosemiotics (Emmeche and Kull, 2011; Hoffmeyer, 2009) provides contemporary language and examples to understand Goldstein's concept, and expands the breadth of its application to include all living things (not only humans). The introduction to biosemiotics also provides an opportunity for humanistic psychology to form a meaningful collaboration with the naturalistic sciences. Self-actualization is defined through three important aspects. The first is that of individuation or the process of becoming a self. The second is that of holism, or the recognition that the organism and environment comprise a meaningful whole. Finally, the third is that self actualization is the only motivating drive. With the expansion of application that a biosemiotic view provides, it is maintained that all life is governed by biosemiosis.

This essay clarifies the genealogy of the term and concept of dispositif in Foucault against a recent interpretation introduced by Agamben, one which via Hegel reduces the biopolitical dispositif to the idea of the theological dispositio, i.e. the Divine Plan according to early Christianity. On the contrary, this essay argues that Foucault was influenced by his master Canguilhem’s notion of socio-organic normativity, when in 1975 he introduced the idea of the dispositif of biopower as a normative project. The dispositif is then traced back, theoretically and philologically, to the definition of social normativity that Foucault takes from Canguilhem’s The Normal and the Pathological (1966) and to the use of the term dispositif by Canguilhem himself in the essay “Machine and Organism” (1952). Both these lineages proceed from the notion of organic normativity that Canguilhem adopts from the German-Jewish neurologist Kurt Goldstein, that is from a tradition of Lebensphilosophie that appears to be incompatible with Agamben’s theological thesis. However, the essay “Machine and Organism” also reveals that a critique of the theological dispositif was certainly not absent when this term was first discussed by Canguilhem in relation to the gears of power. In conclusion, the genealogy of normativity behind the notion of dispositif points once again to an under-recognized issue in the current theorizations of subjectivity, namely the normative autonomy of the subject and its constituent abnormality.

La influencia de Kurt Goldstein en el pensamiento de Georges Canguilhem se extendió a lo largo de toda su obra. El presente trabajo pretende recuperar esta relación con el objeto de realizar un estudio de la norma como nexo o conexión entre el concepto y la vida. En consecuencia, este trabajo será una reflexión sobre el planteamiento de la vida como actividad normativa y auto-realización. Para ello, será necesario resignificar los conceptos de salud y enfermedad, y atravesar el camino que va de uno a otro. Al final de este camino, se encontrará que estos conceptos permiten explicar la identidad entre el concepto y la vida, lo cual conduce a la conclusión inesperada que la cura es, en definitiva, autocuración.

The influence of Kurt Goldstein on the thinking of Georges Canguilhem extended throughout his entire work. This paper seeks to examine this relationship in order to conduct a study of the norm as a nexus or connection between the concept and life. Consequently, this work will be a reflection on the approach to life as a regulatory activity and self-realization.  For this, it will be necessary to redefine the concepts of health and disease, and make a crossover between the two. At the end of this trajectory, it will be found that these concepts can explain the identity between the concept and life, which leads to the unexpected conclusion that the cure is ultimately self-healing.

Few readily identify Maslow as a developmental psychologist. On the other hand, Maslow's call for holistic/systemic, phenomenological, and dynamic/ relational developmental perspectives in psychology (all being alternatives to the limitations of the dominant natural science paradigm) anticipated what emerged both as and in the subdiscipline of developmental psychology. In this article, we propose that Maslow's dynamic systems approach to healthy human development served as a forerunner for classic and contemporary theory and research on parallel constructs in developmental psychology that provide empirical support for his ideas—particularly those affiliated with characteristics of psychological health (i.e., self-actualization) and the conditions that promote or inhibit it. We also explore Maslow's adaptation of Goldstein's concept of self-actualization, in which he simultaneously: (a) explicated a theory of safety versus growth that accounts for the two-steps-forward-one-step-back contiguous dynamic that realistically characterizes the ongoing processes of being-in-becoming and psychological integration in human development/maturity and (b) emphasized being-in-the-world-with-others with the intent of facilitating the development of an ideal society

Approaching Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as an intellectual ‘Gordian knot’, this paper takes up the question as to what has ‘primacy’ within this project as a way to provide insight into the relation between empirical science and transcendental philosophy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment. Although the thesis of the primacy of perception expresses an overall result of Merleau-Ponty’s project, it needs to be examined more closely in terms of what has logical priority within it. This priority is necessarily methodological, pertaining to the productivity that actuates and sustains the phenomenological project. This productivity is a matter neither of reflection nor embodiment, but rests on their prior unity. To illuminate this, I show how Kurt Goldstein’s conception of biology provided Merleau-Ponty with a scientific model for approaching human existence holistically in which primacy pertains to the transcendental activity of productive imagination that generates the eidetic organismic Gestalt in terms of which sense is made of empirical facts. This model is followed in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual synthesis and the analogous role played therein by what he called ‘projection’, as well as in his account of phenomenology’s methodological self-reference. Parallel to Goldstein, then, primacy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment pertains to the transcendental projection of the organismic Gestalt as the eidetic frame for empirical research. In terms of the relation between science and philosophy in this account, the empirical and the eidetic are coupled dialectically on an epistemically equal basis, but they are jointly subordinated to the normative commitments implied by the projective activity. The primacy of the latter is practical such that any tension between empirical science and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is ultimately a metaphilosophical – not a theoretical – issue.

Dans sa thèse de médecine de 1943 sur le normal et le pathologique, Georges Canguilhem se sert largement des idées de Kurt Goldstein lorsqu’il définit la normalité comme la capacité de l’organisme à créer de nouvelles normes de vie dans un débat polarisé avec son milieu. Pourtant, il déclara ensuite que les conceptions de Goldstein avaient constitué pour lui un « encouragement et non une inspiration ». Les archives personnelles de Canguilhem nous permettent effectivement de considérer le rapport de Canguilhem à Goldstein comme une convergence plutôt que comme une influence mais surtout, l’usage que Canguilhem fait de Goldstein nous permet de mieux saisir la portée de ses propres idées. Nous interrogeons dans une première partie la conception holiste de l’organisme de Goldstein, dans ses rapports à la gestalt-théorie et à Kant, conception qui se réfère au processus d’actualisation de l’essence de l’organisme dans son rapport avec le milieu. Ceci nous permet d’appréhender l’usage que fait Canguilhem de certains concepts et idées de Goldstein pour élaborer son propre concept de normativité vitale. Dans une deuxième partie, nous nous proposons de comprendre la manière dont Canguilhem pose le problème du rapport de la connaissance à la normativité vitale à partir de sa lecture des textes du neurologue allemand.

Summary in English (paper is in German):

The work of the Russian psychologist Eugenia Hanfmann is characterized by a great closeness to Gestalt psychology, both in scientific research and in the clinical field. This correspondence is already visible in her dissertation on the formation of visual associations, which was published in the "Zeitschrift für Psychologie" in 1928. Marianne Simmel writes about this in her tribute to Eugenia Hanfmann: "Koffka had been impressed by Hanfmann's dissertation and regarded it as falling directly within the framework of Gestalt psychology, though independently achieved." (Simmel 1986, 349)
Reviewing Hanfmann's other research papers, one also recognizes the holistic and experimental approach typical of Gestalt psychology as well as of Vygotsky's Russian psychology, in which attention is paid to the interaction between the whole and the parts and the relationship between person and environment. Her monograph "Case Lanuti" (1944), co-authored with Kurt Goldstein and Maria Rickers-Ovsiankina, is still much cited today. The "Case Lanuti" was and is considered a particularly striking example of an extreme manifestation of "concrete behavior" and loss of the capacity for "abstract behavior," in the patient Lanuti in the wake of brain injury. With Tamara Dembo, she conducted clinical studies of the psychological situation of patients on admission to a psychiatric hospital, which are still fundamental to the clinical theory of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy (Dembo & Hanfmann 1934 and 1936). These studies use Lewin's dynamic-field-theoretical conception to replace the view of patients fixated exclusively on categories of illness with a differentiated understanding of their concrete psychological situation.

Zusammenfassung:

Die Arbeiten der russischen Psychologin Eugenia Hanfmann waren sowohl in der wissenschaftlichen Forschung als auch im klinischen Bereich von einer großen Nähe zur Gestaltpsychologie gekennzeichnet. Diese Übereinstimmung kommt bereits in ihrer Dissertation über die Entstehung visueller Assoziationen zum Ausdruck, die 1928 in der Zeitschrift für Psychologie veröffentlicht wurde. Marianne Simmel schreibt dazu in ihrer Hommage an Eugenia Hanfmann: „Koffka had been impressed by Hanfmann´s dissertation and regarded it as falling directly within the framework of Gestalt psychology, though independently achieved”. (Simmel 1986, 349)
Auch bei Durchsicht anderer Forschungsarbeiten Hanfmanns erkennt man die für die Gestaltpsychologie wie auch für die russische Psychologie Wygotskis typische ganzheitliche und experimentelle Herangehensweise, in der das Augenmerk auf die Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Ganzen und den Teilen und der Beziehung zwischen Person und Umwelt gelegt wird. Bis heute viel zitiert ist ihre gemeinsam mit Kurt Goldstein und Maria Rickers-Ovsiankina verfasste Monographie „Case Lanuti“ (1944). Der „Fall Lanuti“ galt und gilt als besonders eindrucksvolles Beispiel für eine extreme Ausprägung des „konkreten Verhaltens“ und des Verlusts der Fähigkeit zum „abstrakten Verhalten“, beim Patienten Lanuti im Gefolge einer Gehirnverletzung. Mit Tamara Dembo führte sie klinische Studien zur psychologischen Situation von Patienten bei der Aufnahme in ein psychiatrisches Spital durch, die bis heute grundlegend für die klinische Theorie der Gestalttheorie und Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie sind (Dembo & Hanfmann 1934 und 1936). Diese Untersuchungen nutzen die  dynamisch-feldtheoretische Konzeption von Lewin dazu, den ausschließlich auf Krankheitskategorien fixierten Blick auf PatientInnen durch ein differenziertes Verständnis ihrer konkreten psychologischen Situation zu ersetzen.

This paper contributes to the conceptual clarification of ‘heroism’ as the central idea of ‘heroism science’ (HS), by outlining an approach to heroic action, in its distinction from ‘moral saintliness’, based in a phenomenological account of embodied existence. I first address the paradoxical tension obtaining between the ‘exceptionalization’ of heroism and what has been termed its ‘banality’. Through a discussion of moral supererogation, this points toward a conception of heroic action that excludes self-sacrifice. With reference to examples of ‘Holocaust rescuers’, I develop a view of heroic action as reflecting a pre-personal practical necessity, an anonymous incapacity to do otherwise. I then substantiate this view with considerations drawn from the phenomenology of embodied existence, relying in particular upon the distinction drawn by Merleau-Ponty between the ‘actual’ and ‘habitual’ dimensions of embodiment. On this basis, I sketch out how heroic and saintly action can be understood as contrary ways in which the tension between these dimensions of embodiment is resolved. This approach affords conceptually clear notions of heroism, moral saintliness, and the distinction between them, and on this basis it portends the sort of coherent and viable understanding of heroism’s ‘banality’ that HS requires. By way of conclusion, I briefly address some of the theoretical advantages of this approach, along with some of the larger stakes involved.

Die Zeitschrift „Psychologische Forschung“ ist in den Jahren 1922 bis 1938 im „Verlag von Julius Springer“ erschienen. Sie gilt als das bedeutendste Publikationsorgan der Gestaltpsychologie in ihren Pionierjahren und der Blüte ihrer Entwicklung in Deutschland. Dieser Sammelband bietet ein komplettes Verzeichnis aller Beiträge in dieser Zeitschrift in den Jahren 1922 bis 1938, erschlossen durch einen Personen- und Sachindex und ergänzt durch Verzeichnisse der wichtigsten Forschungsreihen, die in dieser Zeitschrift erschienen sind.

A comprehensive listing of all articles, research reports, and book reviews, which appeared in "Psychologische Forschung", the main journal of Gestalt psychology in its early years, 1922-1938. Including indices of names and subjects, and other material, accompanied by an introduction and comments by Kurt Guss.

Canguilhem is known to have regretted, with some pathos, that Life no longer serves as an orienting question in our scientific activity. He also frequently insisted on a kind of uniqueness of organisms and/or living bodies – their inherent normativity, their value-production and overall their inherent difference from mere machines. In addition, Canguilhem acknowledged a major debt to the German neurologist-theoretician Kurt Goldstein, author most famously of The Structure of the Organism in 1934; along with Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem was the main figure who introduced the work of Goldstein and his ‘phenomenology of embodiment’ into France. In this paper I inquire if we should view Canguilhem and Goldstein as ‘biochauvinists’, that is, as thinkers who consider that there is something inherently unique about biological entities as such, and if so, of what sort.

This paper examines two related problems that stand in the way of the development of an interdisciplinary project that spans biology and phenomenology. To be sure, each of these disciplines is interested in the body, but there are two ways through which the body may be understood. Biology examines the corporeal or living body (Kӧrper); phenomenology examines the body of lived experience (Leib). Both problems discussed in this paper stem from this two-fold nature of the body. The first concerns the anti-naturalist position taken by Husserl – a position that emphasizes the lived body and rejects any consideration of the corporeal body. Following Roy et al. (1999), I maintain that Husserl's anti-naturalism is no longer necessary. Kurt Goldstein (1934/1995) is used as an example that demonstrates a biological investigation of the corporeal body that is consonant with a phenomenological perspective, a quality which may also be seen in the many references it receives from Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962). The second problem is that of parallelism – also called the body–body problem (Thompson, 2004). A parallelist collaboration between biology and phenomenology maintains the assumption that there are two bodies that must receive special attention. The problem of parallelism is viewed within the research program of neurophenomenology (Varela, 1996). It is argued that this problem dissolves when it is recognized that there are not two bodies – Kӧrper and Leib – but that these are two ways of recognizing one and the same body. Once again, Goldstein and Merleau-Ponty are used to help describe a two-fold investigation of the body that avoids parallelism and promotes the collaboration which this Special Issue seeks.

Keywords
Naturalizing phenomenology; Kurt Goldstein; Merleau-Ponty; Holistic biology; Flesh

This paper carves out a unique new area of existential-humanistic psychology. Existential health psychology is differentiated from health psychology and existential therapy, and is compared to what Medard Boss argued for in his book Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology. Existential health psychology follows what Kurt Goldstein (The Organism) calls the existential dimension of all medicine. Examples of paralysis and obesity are used.

Mammals, especially prey animals, respond immediately to threats.  Mammals have sophisticated vascular systems that allow the body to moderate the flow of blood to manage different needs (Cannon, 1963).  During fight-flight, vasoconstriction will essentially reroute the blood from the non-essential organs to the large muscle systems in order to make more oxygen available, and increase the volume of blood movement to allow greater oxygen exchange (Cannon, 1963).  Oxygen is critical to the synthesis of lactic acid in the muscles for continued contraction.  A threat can mobilize the tremendous latent capacity in the lungs and vascular system.  We can trigger some of these reactions merely by thinking about increased activity, which prepares the body’s response to meet the potential need (Cannon, 1963).  Many of the body’s survival responses – homeostasis of the blood sugar levels, oxygen supply, and acid-base reactions – are connected to the emotions of fear and rage as precursors for fight-flight responses (Cannon, 1963).  They all serve to render the body to be more effective in the “violent display of energy which fear and rage may involve” (Cannon, 1963, p. 228).  With fear, there is an object attached to the fear.  We can meet the object, attempt to remove the object or we can attempt to escape the object (Goldstein, 1995).  The cause of the fear exists in some sense.  Anxiety, however, has no object we can relate to (Goldstein, 1995).  What is more, if there is no object of the threat, there is no defense, and no safety.

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty's original account of "higher-order" cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty's account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty's analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the case of the braininjured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann's syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider's sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty's interpretations, I argue that "higher-order" cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider's intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann's syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process.

In this paper we focus on the relationship at the turn of the twentieth century between vitalistic theories and a special case of holistic approach to biology, Kurt Goldstein’s organicism. We consider Goldstein’s biographical and historical background and present the research cases that lead him to formulate his ‘holistic-organismic’ approach to the study of the brain and the mind, which developed into an ambitious theory on the nature of biological knowledge. Goldstein’s organicism emerges as an antagonist to the aseptic and unsatisfactory framework of mechanistic biology. However, Goldstein’s organicism strives to keep apart from some members of its own ‘family’ of anti-mechanistic approaches. It is especially wary of the metaphysical commitments of vitalistic hypotheses, and seeks alternative conceptual routes to traditional problems in the biological sciences, like teleology and the organization of the living. Goldstein’s organicism will result in a rigorously materialist but non-reductionist epistemology of biology, which represents in his views the only feasible route to therapy effectiveness. Goldstein’s efforts to solve the problem of teleology, despite incomplete, will ultimately uncover the richest dimension of his intellectual legacy, that of an ethical stance towards science and medical practice.

In “To be or to have his own body : about three kinds of multiplicities in Ruyer’s thought”, Benjamin Berger strives to clarify the place of the body in the philosophy of Ruyer. The body is located at the croassroads of two crucial axes : that of appaearing and that of multiplicities. It is therefore the object where the phenoménology is tied to the ontology, a philosophy of incarnation to a philosophy of living body.

See video abstract on YouTube https://youtu.be/3XU8rxR1BPI
If you cite this, please use OnlineFirst version https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1357034X19834631

A recent widely reported study found that some participants would prefer to self- administer a small electric shock than be bored. This flawed study serves as a departure point to diagram pain and sensation beyond the boundaries of the individual body, consisting of four sections. First, in terms of laboratory-based experimentation and auto-experimentation with pain, there is a long history of viewing pain and touch through introspective means. Second, later theories of pain successively widened the scope of the physiological mechanisms and external influences on the organism, such as Melzack and Wall’s cybernetics-influenced gate control theory. Third, we briefly consider the nervous system as a homeostatic system, which finds an historical parallel in explanations of the milieu inte ́rieur of the organism, via Claude Bernard and Kurt Goldstein. Fourth, pain helps tip the organism as a whole from perception to action, but also operates beyond the organism as a biopsychosocial phenomenon.

'The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe' traces how British, American, and German (and to a lesser degree French and Russian) scientists developed new conceptions of the body as hormonally-regulated or “homeostatic” as a reaction partly to the violence that they saw inflicted on soldiers’ bodies in the theaters of World War I and to the contemporary transformation of medical experimentation and care. During and after World War I, influential researchers working in physiology and related fields produced a shift in the understanding of how the organism responds to bodily injury: turning away from localized injury, and toward approaches highlighting bodily balance and disequilibrium, they developed “integrative” theories intended to explain the body and mind’s responses to aggression. In their work, the organism faced with injury became a whole, often at the moment when it was most under threat. Most interestingly, because its response to the threat or injury was mediated by the bodily systems that underwrite its wholeness, each body responded in a highly individualized fashion that could not be anticipated; nor could the results of this response be anticipated, and in some ways the body was capable of destroying itself in responding to even minor pathologies. The seemingly obscure and technical operations through which physiologists and neurologists theorized these bodily behaviors were immediately recognized as crucial for the understanding of the emotions, of pain, of the disintegration of behavior—indeed of a disintegration of behavior that was caused by the body itself—and of the long-term effects of violence. We also show how the concept of the individual that this “integrationist” physiology developed had major effects on psychoanalysis, on medical humanism and the development of the welfare state, and on politico-economic, technological, and anthropological thought in the interwar period.

Anxiety has become one of the most ubiquitous medical diagnoses in the contemporary Western world. Each year, 18% of the American population – approximately 50 million adults – are diagnosed with anxiety related disorders, costing the economy $50 billion in lost productivity and treatment. Yet as recently as a century ago, anxiety was barely even recognized as a medical condition. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted in his 1844 work The Concept of Anxiety, “it is obvious our subject is not one that may occupy physicians.”  How did this rapid transformation and proliferation of anxiety take place? What are its consequences for present-day scientific discourse? What is the relationship between the popular and the medical conceptions of anxiety? And are anti-anxiety medications like Xanax the only viable option for treatment?

"The Conquest of Dread" provides answers to these and many other questions. My book is the first comprehensive history of one of the defining medical and social conditions of the modern age. In it, I explore how the Western understanding of anxiety has been transformed over the last 150 years, from its genesis as a trope of nineteenth-century philosophy and theology into the medical diagnosis we have today. Utilizing a wide variety of sources, from medical case studies to the personal correspondence of philosophers and physicians, I show how thinkers across a variety of disciplines – theology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychiatry, neurology, and politics – contributed to the construction of anxiety as a medical object.

The development of anxiety was an interdisciplinary effort that took place against the backdrop of modernization, two world wars, and the dawn of the atomic age – historical events that created new experiences, as well as new forms of knowledge necessary to understand them. These events correspond to the three key moments in the evolution of anxiety identified in my book: the birth of the “modern” concept of anxiety in the mid-nineteenth century; the medicalization of anxiety by physicians in interwar Europe; and the turn to pharmacological forms of treatment that occurred in Cold War America.

La Nature humaine à la lumière de la psychopathologie (Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology) réunit un ensemble de conférences (« The William James Lectures ») prononcées par Kurt Goldstein à l’Université Harvard, en 1938-1939 et publiées pour la première fois en 1940 par Harvard University Press. Premier ouvrage de Goldstein paru aux États-Unis où il commence une nouvelle vie, tant personnelle que professionnelle, après avoir été chassé d’Allemagne par le gouvernement nazi.
Formé à la médecine, spécialiste de psychiatrie, mais également féru de philosophie, il est confronté dans ses premières années de pratique aux cérébrolésions des soldats de la Première Guerre mondiale, sources de séquelles irréversibles.
C’est le point de départ d’une réflexion qui transcende les découpages disciplinaires entre biologie et philosophie, anthropologie et neurologie, théorie médicale et pratique clinique.
Goldstein propose en effet une conception de la clinique qui engage le rapport de l’être humain à lui-même, aux autres et au monde, et fait de la biologie une science qui doit être autant capable d’appréhender de façon « atomistique » les phénomènes qu’elle analyse que de développer une compréhension de l’organisme tout entier, malade ou en bonne santé.