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I first became acquainted with Kurt Goldstein's work, and with the man himself, through one of his great admirers, Heinz Werner. These two men shared a dual interest in language and perception and, though dealing with different populations of subjects, they came to many conclusions in common. Goldstein's stress on holistic functioning had had a great impact on Werner and his colleague, Seymour Wapner, especially on their thinking about perception. In the early fifties, when I was a graduate student at Clark University and working on the sensory-tonic theory of perception, I became impressed by Goldstein's concept of the integrity of the organism. His studies of perceptual disturbances in cerebellar patients, his emphasis on the equalization tendencies of the organism, his research and his ideas, formed an important part of all our theoretical discussions. My interest in space perception—an area which interested Goldstein very much—dates back to those days. In the present paper I shall deal with the influence of one variable in particular which intrigued him: meaning.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-40265-8_6

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