The Science of the Soul

What happened during 16th and 17th centuries

Goran Kardum

As its etymology suggests, psychology was born as the science of the soul. (Luccio, 2013)

16th century

  • There was no focus on behavior in the beginning centuries of psychology (sixteenth to nineteenth) (Klempe, 2020)
  • Psychology emerged by the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century
  • Psychology as growing out of philosophy
  • Philosophy, astrology, astronomy, alchemy, and medicine were all closely tied together in the sixteenth century

Two main figure

Philipp Melanchton (1497-1560) and Johann Thomas Freigius (1543-1583)

  • Played the key role in relating the humanistic traditions of Petrarca from the fourteenth century and Agricola of the fifteenth with the new societal transitions linked with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth (Valsiner, 2020)

Thomas Freigius

Modern Psychology roots in 16 c. Why?

  • Reformed theology broke so fundamentally with philosophy
  • The concept of the soul therefore remained central because the understanding of it became absolutely crucial for the extent to which theology and philosophy could separate and move in different directions (Klempe, 2020)
  • The lack of division between the mental faculties (animus) and the spiritual aspect (anima) of the soul which the church had focused on for nearly a thousand years had given theology a superior position

Modern Psychology roots in 16 c. Why?

  • Reformed theology’s demand that the spiritual life generally had to be seen as separate from, and independent of, philosophy.
  • Battle between creationists and traducianists
  • Release the soul’s mental faculties from the theological question

Importance of Martin Luther

  • the relationship between man and God with two main lines!
  • sola fide: he expressed the conviction that man attains eternal life by his faith alone
  • the Word of God, which speaks to the soul of the believer (sola scriptura). Faithfully reading God’s words connects the innermost part of man’s soul with God. (Stieger & Tröhler, 2023)

German Enlightenment

  • Two historian steps for psychology development as separate discipline
  • Protestant scholars from 16th to 17th centuries
  • German Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries

References

Klempe, S. H. (2020). Tracing the emergence of psychology, 15201750: A sophisticated intruder to philosophy. Springer International.
Luccio, R. (2013). Psychologia – the birth of a new scientific context. Review of Psychology, 20(1-2), 5–14. https://hrcak.srce.hr/116334
Stieger, S. P., & Tröhler, D. (2023). The Discovery of the Soul as a Place of Pilgrimage within: German Protestantism, Psychology, and Salvation through Education. Religions, 14(7), 921. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14070921