PSYCHOLOGY. — From the Greek ψυχή, λόγος, it is the “doctrine or science of the soul,” of its nature and operations. The term p. derives from C. Wolff (v.), who was the first to distinguish a “rational p.” and an “empirical p.”: the former metaphysics (v.) and thus constitutes a kind of “special metaphysics,” whereas the latter is based solely on experience (v.). It is precisely in this dualism that the fundamental difficulty in determining the nature and tasks of p. consists.
I. THE PROBLEM OF P. AS A SCIENCE. — The difficulty of determining the nature of p. arises from the very position that man occupies in the world. Indeed, if, from the analytical and systematic point of view, p. constitutes a particular sphere of philosophical reflection, it is clear that, from the synthetic point of view, p. is at once the beginning, the means, and the end of the orientation of human consciousness itself, since in man everything starts from, unfolds through, and comes back to the soul. Therefore, soul (v.) is the “principle of life in living beings,” it is first and foremost the principle of human life, indeed of the individual subject, insofar as each person can experience life on his own account and can understand it in other
men first, and then in animals down to the lowest degree of plant life, only on the basis of his own experience. The understanding of life elaborated by p. thus results from the complex articulation of experiences and reflections that begin from one’s own life and from the relations that each person has with the human and subhuman world.
1. First nature (v.) in which man moves and which moves around him; it is therefore a matter of determining whether every movement of the animal, plant, and physical world has the soul as its principle and cause, and how it can derive from it (cosmological problem: Greek philosophy). 2. Then there is the relation of the soul with the body in which it dwells and which it moves toward the operations of life. This is the most arduous problem of p., upon which the ultimate answer concerning man’s very destiny depends: whether soul and body are two complete or incomplete natures, whether the soul influences the body and the body the soul, whether the soul begins and ends its existence with the body or comes from elsewhere and goes elsewhere at death (metaphysical problem: Christian philosophy). 3. There is also, consequently, the problem of the relation of the individual with other men, both with contemporaneous individuals and with those of the various civilizations and cultures, of the various races and ethnic differences that constitute the historical development of humanity (historical-anthropological problem). 4. Finally, there is the problem of the origin and end of life and therefore of man’s relation with divinity (existential problem). In the historical development of p., these problems are variously present and intertwined, and tend to predominate over one another—not, however, to the extent of completely absorbing one another, but rather in the sense that the others, which are designated as secondary, are subordinated to the one identified as principal. It is therefore unsurprising that p. should present itself at once as the science and form of knowledge closest to man, and as destined always to remain incomplete, contested, and taken up anew: in this way, p., rather than following the condition of the other sciences, which in the history of human thought appear in continual transformation, is the reason for and stimulus to that transformation itself. It should therefore come as no surprise that the problem of determining the nature of p. should still remain open.
The enigma proper to p. consists, in its paradoxical condition, in the following aspects: a) the primordial and inderivable phenomenological certainty that the soul, in its activity, has of its own existence, insofar as no act can occur, whether in the cognitive or in the practical and objective sphere, without the concomitant consciousness on the part of the individual subject (the I [v.], the individual soul) that he knows and acts. b) The unbridgeable metaphysical distance between the activities of the soul and its essence: first, the operations are “many,” whereas the soul must be “one” in order to guarantee the unity of being; then, the operations are “different” and at times even conflicting, whereas the soul must be gathered into itself, “simple,” and indivisible. c) The metaphysical opposition between soul and body, insofar as the soul is the first invisible moving principle and, in man, is spiritual in nature, whereas the body is a visible reality moved by the impulses of the soul and material in nature: it is not understood how two elements standing at the opposite extremes of being can come together in the unity of a nature. d) The functional opposition between consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness, insofar as, while the presence of the soul to itself and of objects to the soul is precisely given in the act of consciousness (v.), that act is linked to limits of time and space, however variable from subject to subject, but always inevitable: hence the problem of the relation between soul and consciousness, and between consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness.
The characteristic situation of p. consists in its being at once the primary consideration that bears upon the essential principle of knowing immediately present to itself (consciousness), thus preceding every other form of reflective knowledge, and a secondary consideration, insofar as, in order to proceed to the determination of its own nature, that principle must reflect upon its practical and noetic relation to things and have recourse to the reflective principles of metaphysics. The historical development and stages of p. depend upon the predominance and the varying emergence, in different periods and cultures, of one or the other of the moments indicated.
II. HISTORICAL OUTLINE
In early Greek philosophy the soul is predominantly considered as the “principle of movement of the phenomena of the cosmos”; hence there is no concern to establish and develop a p., because consideration of the soul coincides nature (v.). A particular interest in the soul in itself emerges in Heraclitus: he asserts its profound mystery (frg. 42: “The boundaries of the soul you could not reach on any journey, traversing every road; so deep is its logos”: Heraclitus, Frammenti, text and Italian translation by R. Walzer, Florence 1936, p. 82) and the personal individuality that accompanies it, in the different destiny awaiting the just and the unjust after death—although this does not accord with the rest of his cosmological conception. Whereas the Ionian philosophers did not properly apprehend the problem of the soul and Parmenides confined himself to considering the problem of knowledge, Heraclitus perceived the problem of the self (frg. 101: “I investigated myself,” op. cit., p. 135), so that it has rightly been said that “in Heraclitus there is found for the first time a p. worthy of the name” (K. Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Gesch. der griech. Philosophie, Bonn 1916, p. 201). Nevertheless, p. as a metaphysical construction developed along the ontological line with Anaxagoras (v. the νοῦς as principle of cosmic order), Plato (the ψυχή as the principle of everlasting motion), and Aristotle (the ψυχή as ἀντελέχεια τεκότη of the body and at the same time as the principle of all the operations of the living being). Aristotle’s De anima, in three books, is the first systematic treatise on p. to have come down to us from antiquity; it constitutes the summit of Aristotelian speculation and, after so many vicissitudes in the life of thought, still remains the principal source of the consciousness of Western man. Of these books Hegel wrote that “they are still, among the works dealing with the particular aspects and states of the soul, the best work and the only one of speculative interest concerning this subject” (Enzyklop. d. philos. Wissenschaft., Philosophie des Geistes, § 378, ed. J. Hoffmeister, Leipzig 1949, p. 327. The same Hoffmeister discovered a translation by Hegel of passages from the De anima with commentary: cf. Vorlesungen über die Gesch. der Philos., XV, part 1, Leipzig 1944, p. xiv). The originality of Aristotelian p. lies in the synthesis of the conception of the soul as immanent form (“act of the body”: De an., II, 1, 412 e 21) and transcendent form (the spiritual active νοῦς: ibid., III, 5, 430 a 11 ff.). Epicurean and Stoic p. materialism (v.) in spiritualism (v.) and materialism of which Aristotelian p. is accused; Neoplatonist p. returns to the primacy of the cosmic function of the soul, but at the same time introduces, together with the theory of ontological emanation, the principle that would develop in medieval p.: the derivation of lower souls and powers from higher ones. Patristic p. develops the concept of man in the new climate of faith revelation (v.) individual (v.), and of the spirituality and personal immortality (v.) of the soul, which is created directly by God; though the Fathers differed on certain points (s. Augustine on direct creation by God, Tertullian on absolute spirituality: cf. his proof of the materiality of the soul in De anima, chap. 7, ed. J. H. Waszink, Amsterdam 1947, pp. 9 and 148 ff.: an extensive commentary with indications of sources). The most complete treatise, of eclectic inspiration, fusing classical p. with Christian doctrine, is the De natura hominis of Nemesius, bishop of Emesa (cf. B. Domanski, Die Psychologie des Nemesius, Münster in V. 1900, p. vii ff.).The history of p. in the Hellenistic period, throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the Renaissance revolves around Aristotle’s De anima. The commentaries may take three forms: 1) continuous literal analysis (e.g., the great commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius, and G. Philoponus); 2) paraphrase (Themistius); 3) questions (the same Alexander of A. in Ἀπορίας καὶ λύσεις). The Arabs, in p. as in the other fields of culture, followed Greek models; in philosophy, at first the Platonic and Neoplatonic current predominated, and it continued also in the commentaries on Aristotle. Avicenna (v.) followed the paraphrastic method, whereas Averroes (v.) adhered to and developed, with continual reference to the Greek tradition, the literal method. Among the medieval thinkers, while s. Albert the Great followed Avicenna’s line, his disciple s. Thomas deepened Averroes’ method. In medieval p. the two tendencies opposed one another: on the one hand, the Augustinian school influenced by Avicenna and Avicebron, with s. Bonaventure, who defended the so-called Christian Platonism; on the other, the Thomist Aristotelian school, which adhered to the philosopher’s principles. The principal points of divergence concerned: 1) The metaphysical structure of the soul, which the Augustinian school held to be composite (and the same applied to the angels), consisting of matter and form, whereas s. Thomas defended its absolute essential simplicity (cf. De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 1). 2) The relation of the soul to its faculties: real identity for the former, real distinction according to s. Thomas (Summ. Theol., 1°, q. 77, a. 1). 3) The mode of knowledge: the Augustinian school, following the doctrine of s. Augustine, accepted the distinction between ratio inferior and ratio superior, insofar as the former “intendit rationibus aeternis consulendis,” whereas the latter “insistit inferioribus per superiora dirigendis” (s. Augustine, De Trinitate, XII, chap. 3, nn. 3–4: PL 42, 88). S. Thomas, on the other hand, in accordance with Aristotelian doctrine, assigned these functions to the active and possible intellect, insofar as it possesses the capacity to “abstract” from experience the cognition of the essence of things. In the face of Averroism, which, claiming to summarize Aristotelian p. in its entirety, defended the existence of a single eternal and impersonal intellect for the whole human species, Thomism proved more active and effective.
Humanism and the Renaissance, although they magnified the primacy of man in the cosmos, exhausted their inquiry in a few particular points (the immortality of the soul, free will, providence) and offered no constructive p. worthy of note (cf. E. Cassirer-Kristeller-Randell, The Renaissance philosophy of man, Chicago 1945, p. 5).
Modern philosophy has overturned the situation of psychology. Preceded by the scepticism of the nominalist school, modern thought, especially from Descartes onward, identified “truth” and “certainty.” Certainty, in turn, was reduced to the presence of “consciousness” to itself (the so-called cogito or “principle of interiority”). Leibniz’s closed “monad” (v.) was intended entelechy (v.) unified with the new principle of consciousness. English empiricism (v.), culminating in Hume’s phenomenalism (v.), reduces psychology to the analysis of the “elements” (impressions and ideas) of consciousness. Finally, with Kant (the das Ich denke überhaupt or “transcendental consciousness”) and especially with the idealist systems deriving from him, “consciousness” (Bewusstsein) becomes “universal self-consciousness” (das allgemeine Selbstbewusstsein), metaphysics (v.). Hegel (v.) wished to distinguish between phenomenology and logic, but in the continuous development of his thought the distinction never became clear (cf. Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Lasson, Leipzig 1932; I, Vorrede, p. 7: phenomenology precedes the system, whereas in the Enzyklop. [cf. § 413] it forms part of it); the Hegelians regard psychology as a section of the “doctrine of spirit,” or as the consideration of “subjective spirit” (cf. C. L. Michelet, Anthropologie oder Psychologie des subjektiven Geistes, Berlin 1840, p. V. ff.). The fundamental error of modern psychology lies in having divided (already with Descartes) human nature into “thought” and “extension,” thus imposing the necessary alternative of materialism and idealism: thus, the predominance of the idealist principle in the first half of the 19th century was followed in the second half by the predominance of positivist and materialist psychology (the “psychology without a soul,” Psychologie ohne Seele, in F. A. Lange’s expression: Gesch. des Materialismus, I, II, sect. 3; 3rd ed., Iserlohn 1877, p. 381). Nevertheless, modern philosophy may be credited with having stimulated the investigation of individual inwardness and the knowledge of the concrete, in order to grasp that sense of man’s temporal existence which classical psychology, under the dominion of “nemesis,” had ignored, while medieval psychology had chiefly devoted itself to metaphysical discussions. The principal error of modern psychology
has been to transform the functional, or operative, subjectivity of consciousness into phenomenological subjectivity, reducing the world to appearance and finally making ontological subjectivity the constitution of being (hence Gioberti’s accusation against modern thought of “psychologism” [v.]). In this way consciousness itself has annihilated itself by asphyxiation, having isolated and reified its intentional function (cf. Ph. Lersch’s analysis of the “dogma von der Selbstbefangenheit des Bewusstseins,” Seele und Welt, Zur Frage nach der Eigenart des Seelschen, Leipzig 1941, especially p. 23 ff.).
In contemporary culture psychology has divided into two principal directions: experimental psychology properly so called, and philosophical anthropology. Experimental psychology undertakes the analysis, description, and investigation of the laws of the various classes of psychic facts, in order to arrive at a conception of human behaviour from a strictly scientific, that is, objective, standpoint. Its historical beginning may be placed with Fechner’s discovery of the “psychic law” (v.), which seeks to determine the relation between the intensity of the stimulus and the increase of sensation; but its true methodological beginning is to be seen in the establishment of the first laboratory for experimental research, founded through the efforts of W. Wundt at Leipzig in 1879, who, in his own writings and those of his pupils, explored almost all the problems of the new science, dwelling especially on representative and emotive synthetic functions. Among the founders of modern psychology should be remembered the physicists and physiologists E. H. Weber, H. Helmholtz, J. Müller, E. Hering, J. V. Kries, who contributed to the analysis of sensations. The higher functions of memory, understanding, and volition were successfully Külpe (v.), who, nourished by profound philosophical studies, introspection (v.) for the first time according to scientific criteria, asserting, against positivist and neo-Kantian psychology, the absolute originality of higher life: to this tendency belong the most resolute advocates of spiritualism in psychology, such as F. De Sarlo, A. Gemelli, A. Michotte, S. De Sanctis, and, in America, Titchener, together with their numerous pupils. Among the more recent tendencies in psychology, up to the Second World War, mention should be made of the “psychology of form” (Gestaltpsychologie), founded by M. Wertheimer and developed by numerous brilliant collaborators, such as K. Koffka, W. Köhler, and K. Lewin; a related tendency is F. Krueger’s “psychology of totality” (Ganzheitsspsychologie), Krueger being Wundt’s successor at Leipzig. A tendency that soon gained the upper hand in American psychology is the psychology of “behaviour” (behaviour), which excludes every psychic factor; it was initiated by J. Watson and is today represented by Tolman. Belonging to psychology, though contaminated by philosophical preconceptions, is psychoanalysis (v.), founded by S. Freud, which attends to the analysis of the subconscious in order to obtain a unified “causal” explanation of psychic life. In the Catholic sphere, the Catholic Universities of Louvain, Milan, and Washington have for almost half a century carried out fruitful and highly esteemed work in defence of a spiritualist psychology.
An original way of directing the problems of psychology as a “science of spirit” (Geisteswissenschaft) is philosophical anthropology, which is a rigorously theoretical discipline: its beginning may be placed with W. Dilthey’s distinction between “descriptive” and “explanatory” psychology (descriptive und erklärende Psychologie); it found its brilliant investigator in M. Scheler (cf. Vom Ewigen im Menschen, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1923, and Die Stellung des Menschen im Kaunas, 4th ed., Neuburg 1949). The specific object of philosophical anthropology is not merely the knowledge of man’s objective properties as a “natural being” (als Naturwesen), but above all the analysis of his inner dispositions, according to which he “acts by himself” in his environment and forms his own “world-view” (Weltauschauung). Unlike objective psychology, which seeks to be an exact science, philosophical anthropology intends to discern the original rhythm of the life of spirit, insofar as it “does not seek solely the truth concerning the nature of man, but demands a decision as to what truth in general can mean” (M. Heidegger, Die Idee einer philosophischen Anthropologie, in Kant und
das Problem der Metaphysik, § 37; 2nd ed., Frankfurt on the Main 1951, p. 188 ff.). This tendency, especially favoured by Husserl’s “phenomenology” (v.) (v.), isolated itself as a pure reflection upon the a priori “truth” concerning the essence of man, in order to clarify the stature of his spiritual life (cf. P. Haberlin, Der Mensch, Eine philosophische Anthropologie, Zurich 1940, p. 7). According to this tendency, it is a matter of grasping the essence of man from a dynamic and not merely static standpoint; that is, of clarifying the “how” (wie) and not simply the “what” (oas) of his spiritual life insofar as it is given in the becoming of freedom, and thus of attaining man in his “original possibilities” (H. Lipps, Die menschliche Natur, Frankfurt on the Main 1941, p. 8). In existentialism (v.), but perhaps places the very concept of psychology as a science in an insoluble crisis.