Sciences of the Soul – The Early Modern Origins of Psychology

Fernando Vidal is research professor at the ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies) and professor at the Medical Anthropology Research Center at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. His most recent book, co-authored with Francisco Ortega, is Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject. Saskia Brown has translated many books from French, including Homo Juridicus: On the Anthropological Function of the Law by Alain Supiot

“Firm scholarly conviction has it that psychology began as a scientific discipline only in the last part of the nineteenth century. Fernando Vidal thoroughly overturns that assumption in his compelling historical reconstruction of the development of psychology from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. He shows how the concept of soul, initially caught in scholastic rationalism, underwent an empirical transformation from the form of the body to the activities of the mind, a mind whose intense thought had been compared to ‘a ligature applied to all of the nerves.’ By contrast, Vidal’s work—linguistically adroit, amazingly comprehensive, and scholarly satisfying—releases the nervous fluids to invigorate the mind of the reader. No other history comes close to his exquisite accomplishment.”

• List of Figures and Tables  Ad LimenChapter 1 The “Century of Psychology”      Psychology as a “discipline” A long past but a short history? Chapter 2 “Psychology” in the Sixteenth Century: A Project in the Making?     The function of the neologism “psychology” Aristotelianism and Galenism Psychologia and the scientia de anima Rudolph Goclenius’s PsychologiaChapter 3 From the Science of the Living Being to the Science of the Human Mind      Psychology as the generic science of the living being Psychologia and empsychologiaOn whether de anima books can themselves constitute a science From soul-form to soul-mind Psychology as a metaphysics of the rational soul The new psychology: Christian Wolff Chapter 4 Psychology in the Age of Enlightenment      Psychology, anthropology and the human sciences A Republic of Letters Methodological discussions in Enlightenment psychology “The best way to perfect this fine Science” Chapter 5 Historicizing PsychologyInventing a bibliographic tradition Constructing a history for psychology “Psychologiae historico-criticae speciminae” The history of the “theory of ideas” Philosophers write the history of psychology Chapter 6 Psychology and the History of HumankindFriedrich August Carus and the “history of humanity” The primitives and the ancients Toward a total history of psychology The psychology of the Hebrews Homeric psychology Chapter 7 Anthropology’s Place in the EncyclopediasEnlightenment encyclopedias The Syntax of the EncyclopédiesThe Paris and Yverdon EncyclopédiesThe “Systèmes figurés” Anthropology in the text The anthropological transformation of morals Chapter 8 Human Perfectibility and the Primacy of PsychologyPsychology in the Paris EncyclopédiePsychology in the Yverdon EncyclopédieThe fields claimed for psychology Metaphysics Logic Morals The psycho-anthropology of perfectibility The union and interaction of the soul and the body Chapter 9 Psychology, the Body and Personal Identity The soul, the body and the “completeness of the nerve” Psycho-theology and “modern identity” The body in resurrection The loss of the body The seed and the brain The emergence of the cerebral subject Appendix I The Two Editions of Goclenius’s PsychologiaAppendix II ANTHROPOLOGIE and PSYCHOLOGIE in the Paris and Yverdon EncyclopédiesAppendix III Articles from the Yverdon Encyclopédie Belonging to Psychology and Their Place in the Paris EncyclopédieBibliographyIndex