Topics in the History of Psychology

First published in 1985. At one end of historical time scale, speculations about psychological processes go back to classical Greek philosophy and beyond. For centuries thereafter, the treatment of psychological subject matter remained largely in the domain of other disciplines, especially philosophy, where it became inextricably interwoven with epistemology. The chapters of this book glance only briefly at these philosophical antecedents, to review the basic concepts and principles that early investigators were to take for granted. They tend then to move to the end of the last century when the systematic study of psychological processes began.