Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) Human nature in the light of psychopathology (1940)
VII. On the structure of personality
...The preference for a certain sensory medium in one field involves certain characteristics of behavior in fields other than the preferred one. These characteristics are not necessarily the same and may be of different natures although they are dependent upon preferences in other fields. They are ultimately embedded and rooted in a definite interactional organization of the personality as a whole. And we must inquire about the qualitative nature of this interaction. For example, if a person is preinclined to the concrete attitude, his behavior is very often accompanied by less emphasis on verbalization and language than is the case in the person preinclined to the abstract. In turn, the latter will fail to regard many details in his environment which do not elicit a language response. Again, the person with a tendency toward the abstract leans toward personalized emotional contacts with others; the person with a tendency toward the concrete is more given to objective realities in social contacts.
I mention these examples in order to illustrate two points: (1) that preferred ways in one field influence and shape preferred ways in other fields; (2) that this influence does not occur by direct causation, nor does it manifest itself by uniform phenotypic symptoms, but rather indirectly, by way of the functional organization of the whole.
...We have acquainted ourselves with the rule that patients have catastrophic reactions, and that their intact performance fields are also reduced, if the demands of the outer world exceed the scope of their impaired capacities. Such a diminution of capacity for performance also takes place if the demands are too low, and the capacities which remain are not called upon and utilized to their full extent. Then a shrinkage of the patient's milieu and personality sets in which is greater than the actual impairment would entail.