To give Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) complete credit for being the first thinker to develop a theory of proto-psychology is unfair to some of the other philosophers from Greece and beyond. However, whilst there is little doubt that the Babylonians and Buddhists, amongst others, developed concepts involving the mind, thought and reasoning, much of their tradition was passed on orally and is lost. For this reason, the Ancient Greeks provide a useful starting point as we delve into the history of psychology.
The teacher of Aristotle, Plato (428/427 BC - 348/347 BC), provided some useful insights into the theoretical structure of the human mind, based largely upon his elegant Theory of Forms. He used the idea of a psyche, a word used to describe both the mind and the soul, to develop a rough framework of human behavior, reasoning and impulses.
Plato proposed that the human psyche was the seat of all knowledge and that the human mind was imprinted with all of the knowledge it needed. As a result, learning was a matter of unlocking and utilizing this inbuilt knowledge, a process he called anamnesis.
In his famous work, 'The Republic,' Plato further developed this idea and first proposed the idea that the mind consisted of three interwoven parts, called the Tripartite Mind.
The Logistikon: This was the intellect, the seat of reasoning and logic.
The Thumos: This was the spiritual centre of the mind, and dictated emotions and feelings.
The Epithumetikon: This part governed desires and appetites.
According to Plato, the healthy mind discovered a balance between the three parts, and an over reliance upon these parts led to the expression of personality. For example, gluttony and selfishness could be explained by a dominance of the Epithumetikon, letting desires govern behavior.
In the Republic, a treatise aimed at theorizing the perfect society, Plato proposed that the rulers of such a society, those who determined course and policy, should be drawn from men where the Logistikon held sway. Individuals with a strong Epithumetikon made excellent merchants and acquirers of wealth whilst the Thumos, which can loosely identified with will and courage, was the domain of the soldier.
Later, Plato renounced his idea of a tripartite mind and returned to earlier proposals of a dualistic explanation for the mind, balanced between intellect and desire. However, this three way split would reemerge in Aristotle's idea of a trinity of souls and, based upon the idea prevalent in many societies and religions, which gave a reverence to the number three, 20th Century psychoanalysts maintained the idea of a human mind balanced between three impulses.
Aristotle's Psychology - Para Psyche
Aristotle, building upon the work of the earlier philosophers and their studies into mind, reasoning and thought, wrote the first known text in the history of psychology, called Para Psyche, 'About the Mind.' In this landmark work, he laid out the first tenets of the study of reasoning that would determine the direction of the history of psychology; many of his proposals continue to influence modern psychologists.
The History of Psychology and Ancient Greek Medicine
Plato and Aristotle adopted a philosophical and abstract approach to defining human behavior and the structure of the mind, but that was not the only contribution of the Hellenistic philosophers. The development of Ancient Greek medicine introduced the study of physiology into the history of psychology, proposing that there were physical reasons underlying many mental ailments. Chief amongst these was the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, who proposed that epilepsy had a physical cause and was not some curse sent by the fickle Greek Gods.
