History
The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China,
India, and Persia all engaged in the philosophical study of psychology.
Historians note that Greek philosophers, including Thales, Plato, and Aristotle
(especially in his De Anima treatise),[14] addressed the workings of the
mind.[15] As early as the 4th century BC, Greek physician Hippocrates theorized
that mental disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes.[16]
In China, psychological understanding grew from the
philosophical works of Laozi and Confucius, and later from the doctrines of
Buddhism. This body of knowledge involves insights drawn from introspection and
observation, as well as techniques for focused thinking and acting. It frames the
universe as a division of, and interaction between, physical reality and mental
reality, with an emphasis on purifying the mind in order to increase virtue and
power. An ancient text known as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal
Medicine identifies the brain as the nexus of wisdom and sensation, includes
theories of personality based on yin–yang balance, and analyzes mental disorder
in terms of physiological and social disequilibria. Chinese scholarship focused
on the brain advanced in the Qing Dynasty with the work of Western-educated
Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), Liu Zhi
(1660–1730), and Wang Qingren (1768–1831). Wang Qingren emphasized the importance of the brain as the
center of the nervous system, linked mental disorder with brain diseases,
investigated the causes of dreams and insomnia, and advanced a theory of
hemispheric lateralization in brain function.[17]
Distinctions in types of awareness appear in the
ancient thought of India, influenced by Hinduism. A central idea of the
Upanishads is the distinction between a person's transient mundane self and
their eternal unchanging soul. Divergent Hindu doctrines, and Buddhism, have
challenged this hierarchy of selves, but have all emphasized the importance of
reaching higher awareness. Yoga is a range of techniques used in pursuit of
this goal. Much of the Sanskrit corpus was suppressed under the British East
India Company followed by the British Raj in the 1800s. However, Indian
doctrines influenced Western thinking via the Theosophical Society, a New Age group
which became popular among Euro-American intellectuals.[18]
Psychology was a popular topic in Enlightenment
Europe. In Germany, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) applied his
principles of calculus to the mind, arguing that mental activity took place on
an indivisible continuum—most notably, that among an infinity of human
perceptions and desires, the difference between conscious and unconscious
awareness is only a matter of degree. Christian Wolff identified psychology as
its own science, writing Psychologia empirica in 1732 and Psychologia rationalis in 1734. This notion advanced further under
Immanuel Kant, who established the idea of anthropology, with psychology as an
important subdivision. However, Kant explicitly and notoriously rejected the idea
of experimental psychology, writing that "the empirical doctrine of the
soul can also never approach chemistry even as a systematic art of analysis or
experimental doctrine, for in it the manifold of inner observation can be
separated only by mere division in thought, and cannot then be held separate
and recombined at will (but still less does another thinking subject suffer
himself to be experimented upon to suit our purpose), and even observation by
itself already changes and displaces the state of the observed object."
Having consulted philosophers Hegel and Herbart, in 1825 the Prussian state
established psychology as a mandatory discipline in its rapidly expanding and
highly influential educational system. However, this discipline did not yet
embrace experimentation.[19] In England, early
psychology involved phrenology and the response to social problems including
alcoholism, violence, and the country's well-populated mental asylums.[20]
