Organismic theories and the " organic " metaphor were inspired by organicist approaches in biology.
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Attention, dialectic, and mental effort : Towards an organismic theory of life stages.
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Gestalt therapy was based in part on Goldstein's concept called " Organismic theory ".
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Laura Perls, in an interview, denotes the " Organismic theory " as the base of Gestalt therapy.
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The idea of an explicitly " organismic theory " dates at least back to the publication of Kurt Goldstein's " The organism : A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man " in 1934.
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"' Organismic theories "'in psychology are a family of holistic psychological theories which tend to stress the organization, unity, and integration of human beings expressed through each individual's inherent growth or developmental tendency.
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Initially proposed in 1940, it was formulated in 1957 and states that " wherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration . " It is an example of an organismic theory based on the intrinsic activity of living systems and is parallel to Piaget s genetic epistemology both emphasizing a wholistic view of development.