ABSTRACT
Christian von Ehrenfels was born in Rodaun, a village near Vienna, Austria, on June 2, 1859. Ehrenfels was also passionate about music. Around 1880, he was becoming more and more disillusioned with religious matters and gave up his faith in Catholicism. In his belief in the advancement of the human race, Ehrenfels supported Darwin's evolution theories and even supported eugenic breeding of superior males in polygamist relationships. Psychology in the late nineteenth century was essentially atomistic. That is, the mind or consciousness could be divided into individual components such as sensations and feelings. It has become evident that the work of Ehrenfels was one of the milestones that helped to establish the groundwork for the advancement of Gestalt psychology and Ganzheitspsychologie. A holistic approach to the study of the mind was to come in the form a Ganzheitspsychologie of the late nineteenth century and Gestalt psychology in the early part of the twentieth century.
