The late antique history of psychology: The test case of introspection.

Abstract

This article argues for the need to broaden the scholarly focus on the history of the modern discipline of psychology to include the history of psychological knowledge. It seeks to demonstrate the benefits to be derived from this endeavor by focusing on late antique psychology and presenting the novel methods of psychological investigation that emerged within the Christian monastic movement, especially introspection. Far from being a historically recent invention, I argue that introspection was systematically and self-consciously employed by late antique monks as a method for producing knowledge about the human mind. Yet rather than arguing for a simple continuity between late antique and modern introspective procedures, a comparison between early monastic introspective accounts and those of the founders of the modern psychology reveals profound differences in the interpretation and evaluation of introspective data; thereby, it allows one to address fundamental questions related to the nature of psychological knowledge and its relationship with culturally constructed categories.

A historical perspective on mental health: Proposal for a dialogue between history and psychology.

“…For the roots of the Christian therapeutic procedures in Greco-Roman philosophy, seeHadot (1995).7 SeeVeyne (1987, p. 229),Veyne (1978),Stroumsa (1990), andGraiver (2019).8 For example, there is a great increase in the portraiture of the individual in writing and art in the first centuries of the common era (seeSwain, 1997). Another indication is the new insistence in philosophical texts of this period on the need to pay attention to oneself (seeFoucault, 1986).9 See the editor's introduction inThumiger and Singer (2018).…”

Making a case for Göbekli Tepe in evolutionary psychology: Comment on Henley (2020).

“…In some cases, these philosophical movements possessed aspects that presaged elements of modern psychology. For example, it has been argued that early forms of self-examination by Stoic philosophers were akin to the introspective methodology of the first scientific psychologists (Graiver, 2019). Furthermore, Cavanna (2019) has argued that the practices of Hellenistic philosophy, including that of the Stoics, represented an early form of psychotherapy, similar in some ways to cognitive-behavioral therapy.…”