ABSTRACT
This chapter looked at some of the most salient historical contributions to modern neuropsychological rehabilitation, recognising such people as Goldstein, Poppelreuter, Luria, Zangwill, Ben-Yishay, Diller and Prigatano. It addresses the need for broad theoretical base when planning and implementing rehabilitation programmes, to ensure good clinical practice. The most important and influential person from that era was Kurt Goldstein, a German neurologist and psychiatrist who was a pioneer in modern neuropsychology. The most famous neuropsychologist who came to the fore in World War Two (WW2) was Alexander Romanovich Luria from what was then the Soviet Union. He is often called the grandfather of neuropsychology. Closer to the latter in the sense of providing theories of treatment are the five steps of neuropsychological interventions suggested by Gross and Schutz (1986). These are: environmental control, stimulus-response (S-R) conditioning. Clinical neuropsychologists are heavily engaged in assessment, that is, the systematic collection, organisation, and interpretation of information about a person and his or her situation.
