Psychology
psychology
(Greek: psyche, soul; logos, doctrine)
In the most general sense the science of the soul and its operations. The ancients, Aristotle and the medieval Scholastics, treated the whole matter together; but in modern times, owing to the development of experimental seiences, a distinction is made between empiric psychology which, by use of experimental method (e,g., memory tests), studies data of consciousness, their laws, and correlation of body and soul; and rational (philosophical) psychology which, by argumentation, principally deductive, studies the causes and principles of psychic activity on the basis of experimentally established facts (e.g., from operations of intellect and will argues the spirituality of human soul). To be complete, both empiric and rational psychology should embrace study of soul and its manifestations wherever found, in plants, brute animals, men. Since the goal of rational psychology is the establishment of the ultimate nature of soul and its manifestations, it must begin with data (normal and abnormal) supplied either by experiences of every-day life or by scientifically controlled experiment. In both cases the method to be followed is that of introspective observation aided and corrected by other supplementary sources, and of careful analysis of the various activities of living things. Based on the results of such study, rational psychology proceeds to an explanatory account of the nature of the agent or subject of these activities (soul), with its chief properties, e.g., the nature of life and of soul, the different kinds of life (vegetative, sensitive, intellectual), knowledge and appetition, spirituality and immortality of the human soul, and quite generally the question of the origin of life and of species (Evolution or Transformism).
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Psychology
(Gr. psyche, logos; Lat. psychologia; Fr. psychologie; Ger. Seelenkunde)
In the most general sense, psychology is the science which treats of the soul and its operations. During the past century, however, the term has come to be frequently employed to denote the latter branch of knowledge — the science of the phenomena of the mind, of the processes or states of human consciousness. Moreover, the increasing differentiation, characteristic of the advance of all departments of knowledge in recent years, has manifested itself in so marked a manner in psychological investigation that there are already severe distinct fields of psychological work, each putting forward claims to be recognized as a separate science. The term psychologia seems to have first come into use about the end of the sixteenth century (Goclenius, 1590, Casmann’s “Psychologia Anthropologica”, 1594). But the popularization of the name dates from Ch. Wolff in the eighteenth century.
History
Aristotle may well be deemed the founder of this as of so many other sciences, though by him it is not distinguished from general biology, which is itself part of physics, or the study of nature. His treatise peri psyches (“De Anima”) was during two thousand years virtually the universal textbook of psychology, and it still well repays study. In the investigation of vital phenomena Aristotle employed to some extent all the methods of modern science: observation, internal and external; comparison; experiment; hypothesis; and induction; as well as deduction and speculative reasoning. He defines the soul as the “Entelechy or form of a natural body potentially possessing life”. He distinguishes three kinds of souls, or grades of life, the vegetative, the sensitive, and the intellectual or rational. In man the higher virtually includes the lower. He investigates the several functions of nutrition, appetency, locomotion, sensuous perception, and intellect or reason. The last is confined to man. The working of the senses is discussed by him in detail; and diligent anatomical and physiological study, as well as careful introspective observation of our conscious processes, is manifested. Knowledge starts from sensation, but sense only apprehends the concrete and singular thing. It is the function of the intellect to abstract the universal essence. There is a radical distinction between thought and sentiency. The intellect or reason (nous) is separate from sense and immortal, though how precisely we are to conceive this nous and its “separateness” is one of the most puzzling problems in Aristotle’s psychology. Indeed, the doctrines of free will and personal immortality are not easily reconciled with parts of Aristotle’s teaching.
Scholastic period
There is little effort at systematic treatment of psychology from Aristotle to the medieval philosophers. For Epicurus, psychology was a branch of physics in subordination to a theory of hedonistic ethics. With the introduction of Christianity certain psychological problems such as the immortality and the origin of the soul, free will and moral habits at once assumed a vastly increased importance and raised the treatise “De Anima”, to one of the most important branches of philosophy. Moreover, the angels being assumed to be spirits in many ways resembling the human soul conceived as separate from the human body, a speculative theory of the nature, attributes, and operations of the angelic beings, partly based on Scriptural texts, partly deduced by analogical reasoning from human psychology, gradually grew up and received its final elaboration in the Middle Ages in the metaphysical theology of the Schoolmen. The Christian mystics were naturally led to consider the character of the soul’s knowledge of God. But their treatment of psychological questions is generally vague and obscure, whilst their language indulges much in allegory and symbolism. Indeed, the greatest of the mystics were not sympathetic with the employment of Scholastic or scientific methods in the handling of mystic experience. The great controversy between Realism and Nominalism from the early Middle Ages directed much attention to the theory of knowledge and the problem of the origin of ideas. However, although psychological observation was appealed to, the epistemological discussions were largely metaphysical in character during this period. To Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas the popularization of the psychology of Aristotle throughout Europe during the thirteenth century was mainly due. In Questions lxxv to xc of part I of the “Summa Theologica”, St. Thomas gives a very fairly complete and systematic account of the leading topics connected with the soul. However, questions of biology, general metaphysics, and theology were constantly interwoven with psychology for many centuries afterwards. Indeed, the liberal use made of physiological evidence in psychological discussions is a marked feature in the treatment of this branch of philosophy throughout the entire history of scholastic philosophy. But although there is plenty of proof of acute observation of mental activities, the usual appeal in discussion is rather to metaphysical analysis and deductive argument than to systematic introspective observation and induction, so characteristic of modern psychology. The treatise “De Anima” of Suarez is a very good example of scholastic psychology at the close of the Middle Ages. The treatise, containing six books, starts in book I with an inquiry into the essence of the soul. Recalling Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the form of the body, the author proceeds to examine the relations of the vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul. Next, in book II he treats of the faculties of the soul in general and their relation to the soul as an essence. In book III he investigates the nature and working of the cognitive faculties, and especially of the senses. In book IV he inquires into the character of the activity of the intellect. In book V he deals with faculties of appetency and free will. Book VI is devoted to a speculative consideration of the condition and mode of operation of the soul in a future life. In each question he begins with a summary of previous opinions and then puts forward his own solution. The order of treatment starting from the essence and passing thence to the faculties and their operations is characteristic of the scholastic treatises generally. The method is mainly deductive and the argument metaphysical, though in dealing with the senses there is constant appeal to recognized physiological authorities from Aristotle to Vesalius.
In psychology as well as in other branches of philosophy the influence of Descartes was considerable though indirect. His subjective starting-point, cogito, ergo sum, his insistence on methodic doubt, his advocacy of reflection on thought and close scrutiny of our fundamental ideas, all tended to encourage the method of internal observation, whilst the mechanical explanation of the “Traité des Passions” favoured the advent of physiological psychology. It was probably, however, John Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding” (1690) which did most to foster the method of analytic introspection which constitutes the principal feature of modern psychological method. Notwithstanding the confused and inconsistent metaphysics and the many grave psychological blunders with which that work abounds, yet his frequent appeal to inner experience, his honest efforts to describe mental processes, and the quantity of acute observations scattered throughout the work, coming also at an age when the inductive method was rapidly rising in popularity, achieved a speedy and wide success for his book, and gave a marked empirical bent to all future English psychology.
Psychological observation and analysis were still more skilfully used by Bishop Berkeley as a principle of explanation in his “Theory of Vision”, and then employed by him to establish his psychological creed of Idealism. Finally, David Hume, the true founder of the Associationist school of psychology, still further increased the importance of the method of introspective analysis by the daring sceptical conclusions he claimed to establish by its means. The subsequent British adherents of the Associationist school Hartley, the two Mills, Bain, and Herbert Spencer, continued this method and tradition along the same lines. There is constant direct appeal to inner experience combined with systematic effort to trace the genesis of the highest, most spiritual, and most complex mental conceptions back to elementary atomic states of sensuous consciousness. Universal ideas, necessary truths, the ideas of self, time, space, causality as well as the conviction of an external material world were all explained as the outcome of sensations and association. The reality of any higher activities or faculties essentially different from the lower sensuous powers was denied, and all the chief data formerly employed in establishing the simplicity, spirituality, and substantiality of the soul were rejected. Rational or metaphysical psychology was thus virtually extinguished and erased from English philosophical literature during the nineteenth century. Even the more orthodox representatives of the Scotch school, Reid and Dugald Stewart, who avoided all metaphysical argument and endeavoured to controvert Hume with his own weapons of appeal exclusively to experience and observation, had only further confirmed the tendency in the direction of a purely empirical psychology. The great need in English psychological literature throughout most of the nineteenth century, on the side of those defending a spiritual doctrine of the human mind, was a systematic and thorough treatment of empirical psychology. Excellent pieces of work on particular questions were done by Martineau, W. G. Ward, and other writers, but nearly all the systematic treatises on psychology were produced by the disciples of the Sensationist or Materialistic schools. Yet, if philosophy is to be based on experience, then assuredly it is on the carefully-scrutinized and well-established results of empirical psychology that any satisfactory rational metaphysical doctrine respecting the nature of the soul, its origin, and its destiny must be built. It was in their faulty though often plausible analysis and interpretation of our states of consciousness that the greatest errors in philosophy and psychology of Bain, the two Mills, Spencer, and their disciples had their source; it is only by more careful introspective observation and a more searching analysis of the same mental facts that these errors can be exposed and solid foundations laid for a true metaphysical psychology of the soul.
In France, Condillac, La Mettrie, Holbach, and Bonnet developed the Sensationalism of Locke’s psychology into an increasingly crude Materialism. To oppose this school later on, Royer-Collard, Cousin, Jouffroy, and Maine de Biran turned to the work of Reid and the “common sense” Scotch school, appropriating their method and results in empirical psychology. Some of these writers, moreover, sought to carry their reasoning beyond the mere inductions of empirical psychology, in order to construct on this enlarged experience a genuine philosophy of the soul, as “principle” and subject of the states and activities immediately revealed to introspective observation.
In Germany the purely empirical tendency which had reduced psychology in England to a mere positivistic science of mental facts did not meet with quite the same success. Metaphysics and philosophy proper never fell there into the degradation which they experienced in England in the beginning of the nineteenth century. And although the old conception of a philosophical science of the nature and attributes of the soul was rejected by Kant, and abandoned in the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, yet mere Phenomenalism was never completely triumphant in Germany. Herbart, whilst denying the reality of faculties, postulates a simple soul as the underlying subject of the presentations or ideas which form our conscious life. Hermann Lotze, laying similar stress on the importance of scientific observation of our mental states, insists even more strongly that our introspective experience correctly interpreted affords abundant metaphysical justification for the doctrine of an immaterial soul. Meanwhile the earlier attempts of Herbart to express mental activities in mathematical formulæ led to a more successful line of experimental research in the hands of Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and others. The aim of this school is to attain the possible quantitative measurement of conscious states. As this is ordinarily not directly possible, much industry and ingenuity have been devoted to measuring quantitatively, by the aid of skilfully devised instruments, the immediate physical antecedents and effects of sundry mental activities, by which it is hoped to secure accurate quantitative descriptions of the mental states themselves. Psychological laboratories devoted to research of this kind have been set up in several countries, especially in Germany and America. One of the most successful so far is that at the Catholic University of Louvain, and another has lately been established at that of Washington. In Great Britain, however, the special home of empirical psychology since Locke, the new movement in favour of experimental psychology has not, at all events down to the present time, met with much success. The advance of physiological science, and especially of that of the brain and nervous system, has also reacted on psychology, stimulating closer inquiry into the relations between mental and bodily processes. It cannot, however, be maintained that the progress of physiological knowledge, considerable though it is, has brought us appreciably nearer to the solution of the great problem, how body and mind act on each other. The study of nervous pathology, of mental disease and of abnormal mental states, such as those of hypnotism and double-consciousness, has also opened up new fields of psychological research, constantly widening with the last thirty years.
Scope of Psychology
As we have already observed, recent writers commonly confine the term psychology to the science of the phenomena of the mind. Thus William James, probably the psychologist of widest influence during the past twenty years, defines psychology as “The Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions”. (“Principles”, I, 1). Wundt’s definition is: “the science which investigates the whole content of Experience in its relations to the Subject”. (“Outlines”, 3rd ed., 3). Other writers describe it as, “the science of the facts apprehended by our internal sense”, or again, “the science of our states of consciousness, their laws of succession and concomitancy”. The common feature of all these definitions is the limitation of the scope of psychology to the phenomena of the mind directly observable by introspection. In this view it is a purely positivist science from which all philosophical problems are to be excluded, as rigorously as from chemistry or geology. It is, in fact; la psychologie sans âme. If such questions as the nature, origin, or destiny of the soul are to be discussed at all, it must be, according to these writers, not in psychology, but in some branch of speculation to be styled the metaphysics or ontology of the human mind, and to be completely isolated from science.
In direct contrast with this view is that ordinarily adopted by Catholic writers hitherto. By them, psychology has usually been conceived as one of the most important branches of philosophy. In their view it may be best described as the philosophical science, which investigates the nature, attributes, and activities of the soul or mind of man. By soul, or mind, is understood the ultimate principle within me by which I think, feel, will, and by which my body is animated. Whilst the soul and the mind are conceived as fundamentally one, the latter term is usually employed to designate the animating principle viewed as subject of my conscious or mental operations; the former denotes it as the root of all vital activities. By terming their branch of knowledge a philosophical science, it is implied that psychology ought to include not only a doctrine of the laws of succession and concomitance of our conscious states, but an inquiry into their ultimate cause. Any adequate study of the human mind, it is contended, naturally presents itself in two stages, empirical or phenomenal psychology, and rational or metaphysical psychology. Though conveniently separated for didactic treatment the two are organically connected. Our metaphysical conclusions as to the nature of the soul must rest on the evidence supplied by our experience of the character of its activities. On the other hand, any effort at thorough treatment of our mental operations, and especially any attempt at explanation of the higher forms or products of consciousness, it is urged, is quite impossible without the adoption of some metaphysical theory as to the nature of the underlying subject or agents of these states. Professor Dewey has justly observed: “The philosophic implications embedded in the very heart of psychology are not got rid of when they are kept out of sight. Some opinion regarding the nature of the mind and its relations to reality will show itself on almost every page, and the fact that this opinion is introduced without the conscious intention of the writer, may serve to confuse both the author and his reader” (“Psychology”, IV). Ladd, and others also, recognize the evil of “clandestine” metaphysics when smuggled into what claims to be purely “scientific” non-philosophical treatments of psychology.
Psychology is not in the same position as the physical sciences here. Whilst investigating a question in geology, chemistry, or mechanics, we may, at least temporarily, prescind from our metaphysical creed, but not so — judging from the past history — when giving our psychological accounts and explanations of mental products, such as universal concepts, the notions of moral obligation, responsibility, personal identity, time, or the perception of an external material world, or the simple judgment, two and two must make four. The view, therefore, of those philosophers who maintain that the intrinsic connexions between many of the questions of empirical and rational psychology are so indissoluble that they cannot be divorced, seems to have solid justification. Of course we can call the study of the phenomena of the mind, “Psychology”, and that of its inner nature, the “Philosophy of the Mind”; and we may treat each in a separate volume. That is merely a matter of terminology and convenience. But the important point is that in the explanatory treatment of the higher intellectual and rational processes, it will practically be impossible for the psychologist to preserve a philosophically neutral attitude. A truly scientific psychology, therefore, should comprise: (1) a thorough investigation by introspective observation and analysis of our various mental activities — cognitive and appetitive, sensuous and rational — seeking to resolve all products of the mind back to their original elements, determining as far as possible their organic conditions, and tracing the laws of their growth; (2) based on the results of this study, a rational theory or explanatory account of the nature of the agent or subject of these activities, with its chief properties.
Method of Psychology
The primary method of investigation in empirical or phenomenal psychology is introspection or reflective observation of our own mental states. This is the ultimate source of all knowledge of mental facts; even the information gathered immediately from other quarters has finally to be interpreted in terms of our own subjective experience. Introspection is, however, liable to error; consequently, it has to be employed with care and helped and corrected by all the supplementary sources of psychological knowledge available. Among the chief of these are: the internal experience of other observers communicated through language; the study of the human mind as exhibited in different periods of life from infancy to old age, and in different races and grades of civilization; as embodied in various languages and literatures; and as revealed in the absence of particular senses, and in abnormal or pathological conditions such as dreams, hypnotism, and forms of insanity. Moreover, the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the brain and nervous system supply valuable data as to the organic conditions of conscious states. Experimental psychology, psychophysics, and psychometry help towards accuracy and precision in the description of certain forms of mental activity. And the comparative study of the lower animals may also afford useful assistance in regard to some questions of human psychology. By the utilization of these several sources of information the data furnished to the psychologist by the introspective observation of his own individual mind may be enlarged, tested and corrected, and may thus acquire in a certain degree the objective and universal character of the observations on which the physical sciences are built. Introspection is frequently spoken of as the subjective method, these other sources of information as supplementary objective methods of psychological study.
Branches of Psychology
Indeed some of them have rapidly grown to be such large and important fields of research that they now claim to be recognized as special departments of psychology, or even sciences in their own right. Thus we have comparative psychology including animal psychology, child psychology, and race psychology. Again psychiatry or psychopathology, the science of mental disease, also physiological psychology, which, in a broad sense, includes all systematic study of the organic conditions of mental life, or, as Ladd defines it, “psychology approached and studied from the physiological side”.
Experimental Psychology
A special department of physiological psychology which has recently risen rapidly into favour in some countries is experimental psychology, alluded to above in our historical sketch. It is at times styled the “New Psychology” by its more enthusiastic supporters. It seeks to secure precision and an objective standard in the description of mental states by controlling their conditions by skilful devices and ingenious apparatus. Its chief success so far has been in its efforts to measure the varying intensity of sensations, the delicacy of sense-organs and “reaction-time” or the rapidity of a faculty’s response to stimulation. Certain properties of memory have also been made the subject of measuring experiments and more recently considerable industry has been devoted, especially by Külpe and the Würzburg school, to bring some aspects of the higher activities of intellect and will within the range of the laboratory apparatus. Opinions still differ much as to both the present value and future prospects of experimental psychology. Whilst Wundt, the leader of the new movement for the past fifty years, places the only hope of psychological progress in the experimental method, William James’s judgment on the entire literature of the subject since Fechner (1840) was that “its proper psychological outcome is just nothing at all” (“Principles”, I, 534). Apart, however from the very modest positive results, especially in the higher forms of mental life, which the experimental method has achieved or may achieve in the future, its exercise may nevertheless prove a valuable agency in the training of the psychological specialist, both in increasing his appreciation of the value of the most minute accuracy in descriptions of mental states, and also by fostering in him habits of precision and skill in systematic introspection.
Classification
The Faculties
In empirical psychology, with modern writers, the next step after determining the method of the science is to attempt a classification of the phenomena of mental life. In the scholastic philosophy the equivalent operation was the systematic division of the faculties of the soul. Apart from vegetative and locomotive powers the Schoolmen, following Aristotle, adopted a bipartite division of faculties into those of cognition and appetency. The former they subdivided into sensuous, and intellectual or rational. The sensuous faculties they again subdivided into the five external senses and the internal activities of imagination, sensuous memory, sensus communis, and vis cogitativa. But there was much disagreement as to the number, character, and boundary lines of these internal forms of sensuous cognition. There were also divergences of opinion as to the nature of the faculties in general in themselves and to what extent there was a distinctio realis between faculties and the essence of the soul. But, on the other hand, there was general agreement as to an essential difference between all sensuous and intellectual or spiritual powers of the mind. The possession of the latter constitutes the differentia which separates man from the irrational animals.
Content of Empirical Psychology
The psychologist naturally begins with the treatment of the phenomena of sentiency. The several senses, their organic structure and functions, the various forms of sentient activity with their cognitive, hedonic and appetitive properties and their special characteristics have to be carefully analyzed, compared, and described. Next, imagination and memory are similarly studied, and the laws of their operation, growth, and development diligently traced. The discussion of the organic appetites springing from sensations, and the investigation of the nature and conditions of the most elementary forms of pleasure and pain may also appropriately come here. Intellect follows. The consideration of this faculty includes the study of the processes of conception, judgment, reasoning, rational attention, and selfconscious reflection. These, however, are all merely different functions of the same spiritual cognitive power — the intellect. Psychology inquires into their modes of operation, their special features, and the general conditions of their growth and development. From the higher power of cognition it proceeds to the study of spiritual appetency, rational desire, and free volition. The relations of will to knowledge, the qualities of conative activity, and the effects of repeated volitions in the production of habit, constitute the chief subjects of investigation here. In connexion with these higher forms of cognition and desire, there will naturally be undertaken the study of conscience and the phenomena of the emotions.
Genetic Treatment a marked characteristic of Modern Empirical Psychology
The constant aim of modern psychology is to analyse all complex mental operations into their simplest elements and to trace back to their first beginning all acquired or composite habits and faculties, and to show how they have been generated or could have been generated from the fewest original aptitudes or fundamental activities of the mind. This is sound scientific procedure — recognized in the Scholastic aphorism, Entia non sunt multiplicanda prœter necessitatem. We may not postulate a special faculty for any mental state which can be accounted for by the co-operation of already recognized activities of the soul. But the labour and skill devoted during the past century and a half to this combined analytic and synthetic procedure has developed one feature of modern psychology by which it is differentiated in a most marked manner from that of the Middle Ages and of Aristotle. The present-day treatment is pronouncedly genetic. Thus, whilst the Schoolmen in their account of mental operations, such as perception, conception, or desire, considered these processes almost solely as elicited by the normal adult human being already in full possession and control of matured mental powers, the chief interest of the modern psychologist is to trace the growth of these powers from their first and simplest manifestations in infancy, and to discriminate what is the product of experience and acquired habits from that which is the immediate outcome of the innate capabilities of the soul. This is particularly noticeable if we compare the treatment of the mental operation of perception as given in most Scholastic textbooks with that to be found in any modern handbook of psychology. The point of view is usually quite different. Since much of the most plausible modern attacks on Scholastic psychological doctrine has been made in this manner, the genetic treatment from the Thomist standpoint of many psychological questions seems to us to be among the most urgent tasks imposed nowadays on the neo-Scholastic psychologist. The value of such work from a philosophical standpoint would seem to be distinctly greater than that of any results likely to be achieved in quantitative experimental psychology. Obviously there is nothing in the Thomistic conception of the soul and its operations incompatible with a diligent investigation into the unfolding of its various aptitudes and powers.
Rational Psychology
From the study of the character of the activities of the mind in experimental psychology, the student now passes on to inquire into the nature of the principle from which they proceed. This constitutes the more philosophical or metaphysical division of the science. For, as we have indicated, the analysis and explanatory accounts of the higher forms and products of mental activity, which the scientific psychologist is compelled to undertake even in phenomenal psychology, involve metaphysical assumption and conclusions which he cannot escape — certainly not by merely ignoring them. Still, it is in this second stage that he will formally evolve the logical consequences to which his previous study of the several forms of mental activity lead up. His method here will be both inductive and deductive; both analytic and synthetic. He argues from effect to cause. From the character of the mental activities already scrutinized with so much care, he now concludes as to the nature of the subject to which they belong. From what the mind does, he seeks to learn what it is. In particular, from the simple spiritual nature of the higher activities of intellect and will, he infers that the being, the ultimate principle from which they proceed, must be of a simple and spiritual nature. Consequently, it cannot be the brain or any corporeal substance. Having established the simplicity and spirituality of the soul, he then goes on to deduce further conclusions as to its origin, the nature of its union with the body, and its future destiny. In this way by rational arguments the Scholastic thinkers claim to prove that the human soul can only have arisen by creation, that it is naturally incorruptible, and that the boundless aspirations of the intellect, the insatiable yearnings of the will, and the deepest convictions of the moral reason all combine to establish a future life of the soul after death.
———————————–
Important special questions of psychology are treated under the articles ANIMISM; ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS; CONSCIOUSNESS; ENERGY; FACULTIES OF THE SOUL; FORM; FREE WILL; IDEA; IMAGINATION; IMMORTALITY; INDIVIDUAL, INDIVIDUALITY; INTELLECT; LIFE; PERSONALITY. General Psychology: among the Scholastic Latin manuals there is much uniformity of treatment. URRÁBURA, Psychologia, I, II (Rome and Paris, 1894), is exhaustive. HICKEY, Psychologia (2nd ed., Dublin and New York, 1910) is an easy useful introduction; BOEDDER, Psychologia Rationalis (4th ed., Freiburg and New York, 1903). English: MAHER, Psychology, Empirical and Rational (7th ed., New York and London, 1911). French: MERCIER, Psychologie (4th ed., Louvain, 1903); GARDAIR, Philosophie de St Thomas (Paris, 1892-95); FARGES, Etudes Philosophiques, I-VI (Paris, 1890-95). German: GUTBERLET, Die Psychologie (Münster, 1896). English works of various schools: LADD, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory (New York and London, 1895); IDEM, Philosophy of Mind (New York and London, 1895); JAMES, Principles of Psychology (New York and London, 1890); STOUT, Analytical Psychology (London and New York, 1902); SPENCER, Principles of Psychology (New York and London, 1904); BAIN, Senses and Intellect; IDEM, Emotions and Will (London, 1894). Physiological: LADD, Elements of Physiological Psychology (New York and London, 1894); WUNDT, Principles of Physiological Psychology (tr., New York and London, 1904). Experimental: TITCHENER, Experimental Psychology, parts I, II (4 vols., New York and London, 1901-05); KÜLPE, Outlines of Psychology (tr. New York and London, 1894); MEUMAN, Vorlesungen, Experimentelle Pädagogik (Leipzig, 1907). Comparative: WASMANN, Instinct and Intelligence (tr. New York and London, 1903); IDEM, Psychology of Ants and Animals (1905); MIVART, Origin of Human Reason (London, 1889). Child Psychology: TRACY, Psychology of Childhood (Boston, 1907); PREYER, The Mind of the Child, vol. I-II (tr. New York and London, 1901); PEREZ, First Three Years of Childhood (tr. New York and London, 1892); MARENHOLZ-BULON, Child and Child Nature (tr. London, 1904); SULLY, Children’s Ways (London, 1898); BURKE, Child Study (Dublin, 1908). History: general histories of philosophy, such as TURNER, History of Philosophy (Boston and London, 1903); DE WULF, History of Philosophy (tr. London and New York, 1909); STÖCKL, History of Philosophy (tr. New York and Dublin, 1887); PERRIER, Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1909), contains also a useful bibliography of neo-Scholastic philosophy; SIEBECK, Gesch. der Psychol. (1904). See also: BALDWIN, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology; and EISLER, Wörterbuch (Berlin, 1904).
MICHAEL MAHER. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Psychology
(from , the soul, and , a discourse) is that branch of metaphysics which treats of the nature and relations of the human spirit. It has been divided into rational, or speculative, and empirical, or practical. (See Fleming and Krauth, Vocab. of Philos. s.v.)
Biblical Psychology is a term lately applied to the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures on the subject, especially as to the distinction between the rational and immortal soul in man (, ), and the animal, sensitive, and affectional spirit (, ). The subject has been treated with great acumen by Delitzsch (Biblical Psychology, tr. from the German, Edinb. 1867); but the results are rather curious than satisfactory. (See Brit. Quar. Rev. Jan. 1873, p. 162; New-Englander, July. 1873, art. iv.) In fact, the Bible has no scientific nomenclature, and the attempt to reduce its terms to the strict definitions of modern classification, especially on so obscure and abstract a subject, must necessarily prove abortive. SEE MIND.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Psychology
PSYCHOLOGY.The Bible does not contain a science of psychology in the modern sense; but there is a definite and consistent view of mans nature from the religious standpoint. This being recognized, the old dispute, whether it teaches the bipartite or the tripartite nature of man, loses its meaning, for the distinction of soul and spirit is not a division of man into soul and spirit along with his body or flesh, but a difference of point of viewthe one emphasizing mans individual existence, the other his dependence on God. The account in Gen 2:7 makes this clear. The breath or spirit of God breathed into the dust of the ground makes the living soul. The living soul ceases when the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Ecc 12:7). The soul is not, as in Greek philosophy, a separate substance which takes up its abode in the body at birth, and is released from its bondage at death, but is matter animated by Gods breath. Hence no pre-existence of the soul is taught (except in Wis 7:16; Wis 7:20), nor is the future life conceived as that of a disembodied soul. Man is the unity of spirit and matter; hence the hope of immortality involves the belief in the resurrection of the body, even though in St. Pauls statement of the belief the body raised is described as spiritual (1Co 15:44). The OT has not, in fact, a term for the body as a whole; the matter to which the spirit gives life is often referred to as flesh. This term may be used for man as finite earthly creature in contrast with God and His Spirit. Man is flesh, or soul, or spirit, according to the aspect of his personality it is desired to emphasize. The varied senses in which these terms are used are discussed in the separate articles upon them; here only their relation to one another is dealt with. These are the three principal psychological terms; but there are a few others which claim mention.
Heart is used for the inner life, the principles, motives, purposes (Gen 6:5, Psa 51:10, Eze 36:26, Mat 15:19, 2Co 3:3), without precise distinction of the intellectual, emotional, or volitional functions; but it can never, as the preceding terms, be used for the whole man. St. Paul, influenced probably by Greek philosophy, uses nous for mind as mans intellectual activity (Rom 7:23-25), and even contrasts it with the ecstatic state (1Co 14:14-15), and adopts other terms used in the Greek schools. Another Greek term, syneidsis. rendered conscience, is used in the NT consistently for what Kant called the practical reason, mans moral consciousness (Act 23:1; Act 24:16, Rom 2:15; Rom 9:1; Rom 13:6, 1Co 8:7; 1Co 8:10; 1Co 8:12; 1Co 10:25; 1Co 10:27-29, 2Co 1:12; 2Co 4:2, 1Ti 1:5; 1Ti 1:19; 1Ti 3:9; 1Ti 4:2, 2Ti 1:3, Tit 1:15, Heb 9:9; Heb 9:14; Heb 10:22; Heb 13:18, 1Pe 2:19; 1Pe 3:16; 1Pe 3:21), and is an instance of the influence of the Stoic ethics on the moral vocabulary of the civilized world at the time of the Christian era. This distinction of the intellectual and the moral functions of personality is the nearest approach in the NT to the modern science; but the analysis is not carried far. It must be observed that in poetic parallelisms soul, spirit, heart are often used as synonymous, in contrast to flesh (Psa 63:1; Psa 84:2, Ecc 11:10; Ecc 12:7, Eze 44:7; Eze 44:9). The Bible distinguishes the material and the immaterial, the creaturely and the creature, man in his individuality and his dependence on God, but always in the religious interest, that he may recognize his own insufficiency, and his sufficiency in God.
Alfred E. Garvie.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Psychology
s-kolo-ji:
1.Introduction: Scope of Biblical Psychology
2.Nature and Origin of the Soul
3.False Theories
4.Creationism and Traducianism
5.Trichotomy
6.Scriptural Terms
7.Pauline Expressions
8.Monism and Other Theories
9.The Fall of Man
10.Effects of the Fall
11.Death as a Problem
12.Immortality of the Soul
LITERATURE
1. Introduction: Scope of Biblical Psychology:
The extravagant claims made by some writers for a fully developed system of Biblical psychology has brought the whole subject into disrepute. So much so, that Hofmann (Schriftbeweis) has boldly asserted that a system of Biblical psychology has been got together without any justification for it in Scripture. At the outset, therefore, it must be borne in mind that the Bible does not present us with a systematized philosophy of man, but gives in popular form an account of human nature in all its various relationships. A reverent study of Scripture will undoubtedly lead to the recognition of a well-defined system of psychology, on which the whole scheme of redemption is based. Great truths regarding human nature are presupposed in and accepted by the Old Testament and the New Testament; stress is there laid on other aspects of truth, unknown to writers outside of revelation, and presented to us, not in the language of the schools, but in that of practical life. Man is there described as fallen and degraded, but intended by God to be raised, redeemed, renewed. From this point of view Biblical psychology must be studied, and our aim should be to bring out the views of Scripture regarding the nature, the life and life-destinies of the soul, as they are determined in the history of salvation (Delitzsch, Biblical Psychology, 15).
2. Nature and Origin of the Soul:
As to the origin of the soul, Scripture is silent. It states very clearly that life was inbreathed into man by God (, wayyippah; Septuagint , enephusesen; Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) inspiravit). The human being thus inspired by God was thereby constituted a nephesh hayyah (living soul), because the nishmath hayyim (breath of lives) had been imparted to him (Gen 2:7). Beyond this the first book of the Bible does not go. In later books the doctrine is taught with equal clearness. Thus, in the Book of Job: The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life (Job 33:4). The difference in expression should be carefully noted. The living soul Septuagint psuche zosa) is made to depend upon, as it has its origin in, the breath of lives the Septuagint pnoe zoes). The neshamah (breath) is characteristic of man – though it is very rarely, if ever, attributed to animals; man is described as a being ‘in whose nostrils is but a breath’ (neshamah) (Isa 2:22). That breath is ‘God’s breath in man’ (Job 32:8; Job 34:14), or, as it is represented in Pro 20:27, The spirit of man (nishmath) is the lamp of Yahweh. In the New Testament Paul evidently refers to this view of man’s origin in the statement that the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam … a life-giving (quickening) spirit (1Co 15:45). This too agrees with what Christ has said: It is the spirit, that giveth life (quickeneth) (Joh 6:63), and with what Paul himself has stated elsewhere in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom 8:2): The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
3. False Theories:
Scripture therefore repudiates all doctrines of emanation, by which is meant a natural, forth-flowing life from God into the human sphere; it teaches a doctrine of creation, whereby it declares that the Almighty acts with deliberation and design, in free choice, and not of necessity. Let us make man is the sublime utterance of divine wisdom and power. Nor does Scripture teach the pre-existence of the soul – a doctrine found in the extra-canonical, platonically-inspired Book of Wisdom (Wisd 8:19, 20), For I was a child of parts, and a good soul fell to my lot; nay rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled. This doctrine was well known to Jewish writers, and was taught in Talmud and Kabbalah.
All souls were, according to the Talmud, created and kept in secret from the first moment of creation. As creatures of the highest sphere they are omniscient; but at the moment of birth in a human body an angel touches the lips of the child, so that he forgets whatever has been (Emanuel Deutsch, The Talmud). The doctrine, however, must be a later importation into Jewish theology through Plato and Philo. It reminds us of Vergil (AEneid vi. 713), who makes the souls – destined by the Fates to inhabit new bodies on earth – drink of the waters of Lethe (forgetfulness), so as to remove all remembrance of the joys of Elysium:
The souls that throng the flood,
Are those to whom by Fate are other bodies owed;
In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.
According to the Kabbalah, souls are supposed to have an ideal as well as a real pre-existence: ideal as emanations from the sephroth, which are themselves emanations from the infinite real, as having been ‘created’ at a definite time (compare Eric Bischoff, De Kabbala).
The doctrine with some modifications passed into the Christian church, was accepted by Justin Martyr, Theodoretus, Origen and others of the church Fathers, but became obsolete by the latter part of the 4th century (compare Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, II, 9). It was formally condemned by a synod held at Constantinople in the 6th century. In later times it was accepted in modified form by Kant, Schelling and others, and was specially defended by Julius Muller, who held that the soul had a timeless preexistence and underwent a fall before the final act, whereby it was united in time to the body as its temporary home (Ein ausserzeitlicher Urzustand und Urfall). Reference is sometimes made to Jer 1:5, where Yahweh addresses His servant: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. But this text gives no warrant to the doctrine as taught by the writers mentioned. All that may be conceded is, what Delitzsch has termed an ideal pre-existence, i.e. a pre-existence, not only of man as such, but also of the individual and of all: a preexistence in the divine knowledge, which precedes the existence in the individual consciousness (Biblical Psychology, 46).
4. Creationism and Traducianism:
A new question arises at this point, namely, Is the soul a special creation? Is it derived from the parents? Opinions are and have been divided on this point. Many have supported theory of Creationism, by which is meant that in every instance where a new individual comes into being a soul is specially created by God, de nihilo, to inhabit the new-formed body. This view of the soul’s birth found great favor in the early church. It was dominant in the East and was advocated in the West. Jerome asserts that God quotidie fabricatur animas, and cites Scripture in proof (Shedd, op. cit., II, 11). Scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages, Roman Catholic divines, Reformed orthodoxy upheld theory. Though finding little support in Scripture, they appealed to such texts as the following: He fashioneth their hearts alike (Psa 33:15 the King James Version); Yahweh formeth the spirit of man within him (Zec 12:1); The spirit returneth unto God who gave it (Ecc 12:7; compare Num 16:22; Heb 12:9); God, the God of the spirits of all flesh (Num 27:16) – of which Delitzsch declared: There can hardly be a more classical proof-text for creationism (Bibl. Psych., 137).
Traducianism again has found equal support in the Christian church. It declared that the parents were responsible, not merely for the bodies, but also for the souls of their offspring – per traducem vel per propaginem (i.e. by direct derivation, in the ordinary way of propagation). Tertullian was a strong supporter of this view: The soul of man, like the shoot of a tree, is drawn out (deducta) into a physical progeny from Adam, the parent stock (Shedd, History of Doctrine, II, 14). Jerome remarked that in his day it was adopted by maxima pars occidentalium (the large majority of western theologians). Leo the Great (died 461) asserted that the Catholic faith teaches that every man with reference to the substance of his soul as well as of his body is formed in the womb (Shedd). Augustine, however, though doctrinally inclined to support the claims of Traducianists, kept an open mind on the subject: You may blame, if you will, my hesitation, he wrote, because I do not venture to affirm or deny that of which I am ignorant. And, perhaps, this is the safest attitude to assume; for there is little Scriptural warrant for either theory. Birth is a mystery which baffles investigation, and Scripture throws no light upon that mystery. Yet some who have discussed this subject have tried actually to calculate the very day on which the soul is created or infused into the body, as it is being formed in the mother’s womb – in boys on the 40th day after pregnancy and in girls on the 80th day. This indeed is the reductio ad absurdum of Creationism.
Whichever theory we accept, the difficulties are great either way. For if God creates a soul, that soul must be pure and sinless and stainless at birth. How then can it be said that man is conceived as well as born in sin? If the impure, sin-stained body contaminates the pure, unstained soul by contact, why cannot the stainless soul disinfect the contaminated body? And again, if every individual soul is a special creation by direct interposition of the Almighty, what becomes of the unity and solidarity of the race? Is its connection with Adam then purely one of physical or corporeal generation? Creationism cannot account for the birth of the soul. Nor can Traducianism. For it can account neither for the origin, nor for the hereditary taint of the soul. It lands us in a hopeless dilemma. In the one case we fall back upon Creationism with its difficulties; in the other, we plunge into a materialism which is equally fatal to theory (compare Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 626). Perhaps the words of Petrus Lombardus, though frequently misunderstood and misapplied, throw most light on the subject – a light, however, which is little more than darkness visible – creando infundit eas Deus, et infundendo creat (in creating God infused (the soul); and in infusing He creates). The problem is and remains insoluble.
Passing allusion may be made to another very curious theory, to which reference is made by Martensen (Christliche Ethik, I, 107). It bears upon human individuality, as impressed not only upon the soul, but also upon the body. The soul and the body are represented as arising at the same moment, but the latter (not in regard to its physico-chemical composition, but in other respects) is the resultant of soul-influences, whatever these may be. The soul therefore exercises a formative influence upon the body, with which it is united. This theory is attributed by Martensen to G.E. Stahl, who died in Berlin in 1734, as physician to the royal family. We are here in a region where the way is barred – a palpable obscure without the light of day.
5. Trichotomy:
The next important question which has occupied many minds is equally difficult of solution – theory of Tripartition. Is man composed of body and soul (dichotomy) only, or is a third to be added to the two, so that spirit is another element in the constitution of human nature (trichotomy)? Either theory is supposed to be supported by Scripture, and both have had their defenders in all ages of the church. Where the tripartite division has found favor, soul and spirit have been distinguished from each other, as man’s lower is distinguished from his higher nature; where dichotomy prevailed, soul and spirit were represented as manifestations of the same spiritual essence. Under the influence of Platonic philosophy, trichotomy found favor in the early church, but was discredited on account of the Apollinarian heresy. The threefold division of human nature into soma (body), psuche (soul), pneuma (spirit) had been accepted by many when Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea (died 382), attempted to explain the mystery of Christ’s person by teaching that the Logos (or second person of the Trinity) had taken the place of the rational soul in Christ, so that the person of Christ on earth consisted of the Divine Logos, a human body, and a soul (psuche) as the link between the two.
For the tripartite division of human nature two texts are specially brought into the discussion: namely, 1Th 5:23, May your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame – a text which is popularly interpreted as conveying that soul stands for our powers natural – those we have by nature, and that by spirit is meant that life in man which in his natural state can scarcely be said to exist at all, but which is to be called out into power and vitality by regeneration (F.W. Robertson, Sermons). There is very little warrant in Scripture for such interpretation. The language does not require a distinction of organs or substances, but may be accounted for by a vivid conception of one substance in different relations and under different aspects. The two terms are used to give exhaustive expression to the whole being and nature of man (Davidson, Old Testament Theology, 135). There is evidently no distinction of essence here – namely, of a soul distinct from the spirit, and a body distinct from either. In his fervid desire for the complete and perfect sanctification of his disciples, the apostle accumulates these terms in order to emphasize the doctrine of an entire renewal of the whole man by the working of the Holy Spirit. It has been pointed out (A. Kuyper, Het werk v. d. Heiligen Geest, III, 101) – and this must be carefully borne in mind – that the apostle does not use the word holomeres, ‘in all your parts,’ and then summarize these parts in body, soul and spirit, but holoteles, a word that has no reference to the parts, but to the telos, the end or aim. Calvin interprets ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ here as referring to our rational and moral existence, as thinking, willing beings, both modes of operation of the one, undivided soul.
The next text to which an appeal is made is Heb 4:12 : The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Here spirit, soul and heart are brought into close correspondence, with heart evidently as the center of personality, manifesting itself in soul and spirit. The only question is, whether the dividing which takes place by the piercing word of God is one within the soul and spirit, causing a complete exposure of the inner man, a cutting asunder of all that composes his nature, or one between the soul and spirit, causing a division between them as separate parts of human nature. The probability lies with the first of these two contradictory views. The writer evidently meant that, as a sharp two-edged sword pierces to the very marrow in its sundering process, so the sword of the spirit cuts through all obstacles, pierces the very heart, lays bare what hitherto was hidden to all observers, even to the man himself, and discerns the thoughts and intents, which in the unity of soul and spirit have hitherto been kept in the background. The meaning is rather, that the word of God pierces and dissects both the soul and spirit, separates each into its parts, subtle though they may be, and analyzes their thoughts and intents (Davidson, op, cit., 187). At any rate, to found a doctrine of Trichotomy on an isolated, variously interpreted text is dangerous in the extreme. The language of metaphor is not the language of literal speech; and here evidently we are in the region of metaphor.
The ground is now cleared for a fuller investigation of the meaning of these terms:
6. Scriptural Terms:
(1) The terms are used inter changeably, though they are not synonymous. Lebhabh (heart), nephesh (soul), ruah (spirit) are very closely connected in the Old Testament. The heart is there represented as the organ, the spirit as the principle, the soul as the subject of life (Cremer, Lexicon). Hence, we read that out of it (the heart) are the issues of life (Pro 4:23). Dying is represented as the surrender of soul (Gen 35:18; Job 11:20), but also of spirit (Psa 31:5; Psa 146:4). The dead are called souls (Rev 6:9; Rev 20:4), and also spirits (Heb 12:23; 1Pe 3:19). In the last mentioned text the spirits in prison are also called souls. The living are described as disturbed or grieved in soul (Jdg 10:16), vexed (Jdg 16:16), discouraged (Num 21:4), weary (Zec 11:8); but also as in anguish of spirit (Exo 6:9), impatient in spirit (Job 21:4, in the Hebrew), ‘straitened in spirit’ (Mic 2:7). At death the spirit departs (Psa 146:4, in the Hebrew), but also the soul (Gen 35:18). As in the Old Testament so in the New Testament, our Lord sighed or was troubled in the spirit (Joh 13:21)?, but we also read that His soul was exceeding sorrowful, or troubled (Mat 26:38; Joh 12:27). See SPIRIT; SOUL; HEART.
(2) And yet there is a distinction, whatever the real nature of it may be. In Mary’s Magnificat, e.g., we find the two combined in an interesting manner: My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour (Luk 1:46, Luk 1:47), the one clause referring to the personal emotions of Mary, to her feelings as a woman and a mother, all of which find an outlet in adoration, the second clause appearing to indicate the moment when, in the profoundest depths of her being, by the touch of the divine spirit, the promise of the angel was accomplished in her (Godet, in the place cited.). A like contrast meets us in the story of Gethsemane. The Master was ‘exceeding sorrowful in soul’ (i.e. the emotional, sensitive center of His being was in deep sorrow), the disciples were ‘willing in spirit,’ but ‘weak in the flesh’ (Mat 26:38, Mat 26:41). In the Old Testament we find that when a man dies his soul departs, and when he is restored to life his soul returns (1Ki 17:22); but when consciousness or lifepower returns to one not dead, spirit is used (Gen 45:27; Jdg 15:19; 1Sa 30:12; 1Ki 10:5). Even in popular language the distinction is recognized: we speak of so many souls, not spirits, as having perished.
(3) From all this it would appear that philosophic distinction or scientific accuracy of expression is not met with in Scripture. Man is there represented as a unity, and the various terms employed to indicate that unity in its diversity of activities or passivities do not necessarily imply the existence of different essences, or of separate organs, through which these are realized. Psychical action is sometimes ascribed to the body, as well as to the soul, for soul and body are inseparably united to each other. It is the possession of a soul which makes the body what it is; and on the other hand, a soul without a body is unthinkable. The resurrection of the body therefore is no mere figment of the creeds. The body is God’s work (Job 10:8), inseparable from the life of the soul. In the New Testament it is spoken of as the house on earth (epgeios oika), the tabernacle or tent prepared for the occupant (skenos) (1Co 12:18; 2Co 4:7; 2Co 5:1). In the Old Testament we have such metaphorical expressions as ‘houses of clay’; or, as in post-Biblical writings, ‘earthly tabernacle.’ In the latest, we have words which suggest a hollow, a framework, or a sheath, favoring the Greek idea of the body as the husk or clothing of the soul (Laidlaw). Hence, in Scripture, spirit and soul are interchangeably used with body for human nature in general, not as though indicating three separate entities, but as denoting a parallelism which brings out the full personality of man. Soul and body are threatened with destruction (Mat 10:28); body without spirit is a corpse (Jam 2:26); soul and spirit are interchangeably united: Stand fast in one spirit, with one soul striving, etc. (Phi 1:27).
(4) Gathering all together, the Scriptural position seems to be as follows: The Divine Spirit is the source of all life, and its power is communicated in the physical, intellectual and moral sphere. That Spirit, as the spiritus spirans, the inspiring spirit, by its very breath makes man a living soul: The spirit (or breath) of God is in my nostrils (Job 27:3); Thou takest away their breath (ruah, spirit, they die, and return to their dust (Psa 104:29). Hence, God is called God of the spirits of all flesh (Num 16:22; Num 27:16).
Soul, though identical with spirit, has shades of meaning which spirit has not; it stands for the individual. Man is spirit, because he is dependent upon God. Man is soul, because, unlike the angels, he has a body, which links him to earth. He is animal as possessing anima, but he is a reasoning animal, which distinguishes him from the brute (Bavinck, German Dogm., II, 628).
(5) In this connection stress may be laid upon some of Paul’s expressions. He exhorts the Philippians to stand fast in one spirit (pneuma), with one soul (psuche) striving for the faith (Phi 1:27).
7. Pauline Expressions:
He exhorts them to be of the same mind (sumpsuchoi, Phi 2:2); he hopes to be of good comfort (eupsucho, Phi 2:19); he knows of ‘no man likeminded, (isopsuchon), who (would) care truly for (their) state (Phi 2:20). Everywhere therefore we have soul in various combinations to indicate the mental attitude, which in the fellowship of the Spirit he would assume toward his readers, and his readers would adopt toward himself. There cannot be therefore that subtle distinction which men have found in the terms spirit and soul, as though two separate essences were housed in one body. The text in Job (Job 33:4), The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life, is the key to the whole problem. The spiritus spirans becomes the spiritus spiratus – the inspiring spirit becomes in man the life which is expired, outbreathed by man, in both soul and spirit. Soul, therefore, may well stand for the personal, living, animated being – the suffering, acting, thinking, reasoning, dying creature, whose breath is in his nostrils. Christ gave His ‘soul’ (psuche) for His sheep (Joh 10:11). On the cross He Himself exclaimed: Into thy hands I commend my spirit (pneuma) (Luk 23:46). Spirit may therefore indicate the all-embracing power, guiding the inward and the outward life – principium illud internum ex quo fluunt actiones, is Bengel’s comment on Eph 2:2 (compare Luk 9:55 the King James Version; Luk 4:36). Hence, by an easy gradation it may stand for the abysmal depths of personality; while soul would express man’s individuality in general. See SOUL; SPIRIT.
Pauline phraseology has somewhat confused the issue; at any rate, new meanings, not obvious to the reader, have been assigned to various terms. Paul contrasts the psychical and the pneumatic, the man under the influence of the divine pneuma, and the man as influenced by his own psuche. The psychical man is man in his natural, unregenerate state, psychical in this connection being almost equivalent to carnal; while the pneumatic man would be the man guided and directed by the Spirit from on high. Nature and grace are contrasted in the two terms as the first and second Adam are contrasted in 1Co 15:45 – the first Adam being described as a living psuche (soul), the second as a life-giving pneuma (spirit). Even so the psychical body is the body intended, fitted to bear the psuche, while the pneumatic body is evidently the body capable of bearing the pneuma. Hence, the one is corruptible and weak, the other incorruptible and full of power. The soul confined to the carnal body uses it as an organ, till it falls into decay and no longer lends itself to such use. The spirit, in constant fellowship with the Divine Spirit, communicates its energy to a body fitted to be the bearer of this renewed life, spiritualizes that organ, makes that body its docile instrument, enables the body to fulfill its wishes and thoughts, with inexhaustible power of action, as we even now see the artist using his voice or his hand with marvelous freedom and thus foreshadowing the perfect spiritualizing of the body.
8. Monism and Other Theories:
Other questions call for discussion here: they may be briefly touched upon. Scripture acknowledges a dualism, which recognizes the separate existence of Soul and body. It rejects a monism, which makes man but a doublefaced unity (Bain); or considers mind and body as equally unreal, and as aspects, appearances, sides of one and the same reality (scientific monism). It knows nothing of mere idealism, which makes mind the only reality, of which matter is but a manifestation, nor of materialism, which considers matter as that which alone is substantial, while mind is a mere product of the brain (Haeckel). It does not support theory of harmonia praestabilita – pre-established harmony, whereby
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
because soul and body were united in harmonious action before the individual was called into active being, body and soul acting in harmony after creation like two clocks accurately regulated, pointing to the same hour on the dial plate, though driven by different springs (Leibnitz). Scripture has no theory. It deals with facts and facts only in so far as they bear upon the history of man’s sin and man’s redemption. It throws no light on many problems raised by science or philosophy. It does not discuss origins – the origin of evil, of matter, of mind. All is of God is the Scriptural answer to many questions. Thus, the relation of mind to body is and remains a mystery – as great as the relation between the forces in Nature, to which the names of light and electricity have been given. Science has attempted to explain that mystery and has failed. The words of Shenstone (Cornhill Magazine, 1907) may be applied to all psychical problems, outside of Holy Writ, which by him were applied to those scientific questions which remain unanswered in spite of all our efforts at solution: We are still very far from knowing definitely that atoms are composed entirely of electrons or that electrons are nothing else than electric charges; and though electrons have been shown to exhibit electric inertia, it has not been proved that the inertia of atoms also is electrical. The mystery of matter is great; that of soul is greater still.
9. The Fall of Man:
The next question which falls to be discussed is the influence of the fall of man upon his soul. Scripture is clear upon the point. Man’s fall from a primeval state of innocence is there told in unambiguous terms, though the word itself is not found in the narrative, except perhaps in Rom 11:11, Rom 11:12, where allusion is made to the fall (paraptoma) of Israel. With the origin of evil Scripture apparently does not concern itself, though it clearly states that man’s sinful condition stands in direct connection with the transgression of Adam, as in Rom 5:12, where the introduction of sin (hamarta) into the world (kosmos) is spoken of as the act of one man (s.c. Adam), hamartia being evidently taken as a power of evil working in the world of men. The Old Testament allusion in Hos 6:7 can hardly be referred to Adam’s transgression; at any rate the reference is doubtful. the King James Version renders the passage: They like men have transgressed the covenant, though the revisers have translated: But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant. The German and Dutch versions give the same interpretation to the verse: like Adam. The Septuagint takes the term as an appellative (hos anthropos, as man), but the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) refers the transgression to Adam (sicut Adam transgressi sunt). The other allusions in the Old Testament to this event are slight, as in Job 31:33; Eze 28:13, Eze 28:15. In the New Testament, however, the references are much more frequent, especially in the writings of John and of Paul (compare Joh 8:44; 1Jo 3:8; 2Co 11:3; 1Ti 2:14). The strong parallelism between Adam and Christ in Rom 5:12-21, the obedience of the one bringing freedom, while that of the other brought woe, and the contrast in 1Co 15:22 between Adam and Christ throw sufficient light on the question at issue.
Modern science, under the influence of the evolutionary hypothesis, has eliminated or at least has attempted to eliminate the factor of the Fall. That fall has been interpreted as a rise, the descent is supposed to have been a real ascent. Far down the ages, millenniums ago, a miserable, half-starved, naked wretch, just emerged from the bestial condition, torn with fierce passions, and fighting his way among his compeers with low-browed cunning (Orr, Christian View of God, 180) must have emerged somehow out of darkness into light. We are no longer, says Professor J. A. Thomson, as those who look back to a paradise in which man fell; we are as those ‘who, rowing hard against the stream, see distant gates of Eden gleam, and do not dream it is a dream’ (Bible of Nature, 226). If science definitely teaches that man has arisen by slow, insensible gradations from the brute, and no further word may be said on the subject, then indeed the problem of human sin is utterly inexplicable. There can then be no agreement between the Biblical conception and the evolutionary theory as so presented. For primitive man’s transgression would under such circumstances be but the natural expression of brute passion, to which the name of sin in the Christian sense can hardly be applied. But if for minute and insensible gradations in the evolutionary process be substituted the mutations, leaps or lifts, to which an increasing number of evolutionists are appealing; if primitive man be not pictured as a semi-animal, subject to brutish impulse and passion; if with man a new start was made, a lift occurred in the process of development under the guiding and directing influence of Almighty power, the problem assumes a different shape. A sinless creature, transgressing the moral law, is then not an unscientific assumption; conscience asserting itself as the voice divine within the human soul is then not only possible, but actual and real, in the history of man’s earliest progenitors. The Biblical narrative will after all remain as the most reasonable explanation of man’s original condition and his terrible fall. In that narrative will be found enshrined the shadowing tradition of a real, historic event, which has influenced the human race through all the ages. Professor Driver, writing under the strong influence of the evolutionary theory, and accepting as the law stamped upon the entire range of organic nature, progress, gradual advance from lower to higher, from the less perfect to the more perfect, has wisely remarked that man failed in the trial to which he was exposed, that sin has entered into the world … and that through the whole course of the race it has been attended by an element of moral disorder, and thus it has been marred, perverted, impeded or drawn back (Driver, Genesis, 57). See FALL, THE.
10. Effects of the Fall:
An equally serious question arises as to the effects of the fall of man. Shame, corruption, death is the answer given by the Old Testament and New Testament. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen 2:17) was the judgment pronounced upon man. By this was evidently meant death as a physical and as a spiritual fact. Man was doomed. The posse non mori, which according to older theologians was man’s privilege, was lost and was succeeded by a punishment of which the non posse non mori was the doom, i.e. the possibility of immortal life was followed by the impossibility of not suffering death. Not as though immortality was absolutely lost; for with sin came decay, degeneration, death, not of the inbreathed spirit, but of the body into which the soul was breathed by God. But even the body is imperishable. It undergoes change, but not extinction. The resurrection-body has become a possibility through the atonement and resurrection of Christ. The tabernacle is removed, but renewed. The body is not a prison house, but a temple; not an adjunct but an integral part of the human being. The Bible teaches not only a resurrection-body, but a transformed body (Rom 12:1). It speaks not only of a soul to be saved, but of a body to be redeemed. Scripture alone accounts for death and explains it.
11. Death as a Problem:
With modern evolutionists death is an unsolved problem. Weissmann (Essays on Heredity) maintains on the one hand that death is not an essential attitude of matter (p. 159), and on the other, it is only from the point of view of utility that we can understand the necessity of death (p. 23), and again death is to be looked upon as an occurrence which is advantageous to the species as a concession to the outer conditions of life, and not as an absolute necessity, essentially inherent in life. He even speaks of the immortality of the protozoa, because an immense number of the lower organisms are not subject to death (ibid., 26). Death therefore according to him has been acquired secondarily as an adaptation, and must in a certain sense be unnatural. It is indeed one of the most difficult problems in the whole range of physiology. If this be so, we may safely turn to Scripture for an explanation of the problem, which has a value peculiarly its own. By man came death is the authoritative declaration, because by man came sin. In Adam all die, because through Adam came sin. Here we may safely leave the problem, because by man will come resurrection from the dead. See DEATH.
12. Immortality of the Soul:
But if the body is mortal, is the soul immortal? On this point the New Testament gives no uncertain sound, and though the doctrine be not as clearly expressed in the Old Testament, yet even there kinship with God is man’s guaranty for everlasting communion with Him (compare Ps 73). Job longed for such fellowship, which to him and to the Old Testament saints before and after him was life. In memorable words he gave utterance to the hope which was in him: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth … and after my skin (read body)…has been destroyed, yet from my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold and not another’ (Job 19:25). Hosea, the mourner, is responsible for that sublime utterance, which in its New Testament form is recited at the graveside of those who die in the Lord: I will ransom them from the power of Sheol; I will redeem them from death: O death, where are thy plagues? O Sheol, where is thy destruction? (Hos 13:14). Reference may also be made to the words of Isaiah (Isa 26:19): Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust. Still clearer is the note sounded by Daniel (Dan 12:2, Dan 12:3): Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. In one word, the Old Testament saint based all his hope and fellowship on God. That hope strengthened his soul when he shuddered at the darkness of Sheol. It overleaps Sheol in the vigor of his faith. In the Psalms we find the same hope expressed on almost every page: As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form (the King James Version with thy likeness, Psa 17:15); and again: Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption…. In thy presence is fullness of joy; in thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Psa 16:10, Psa 16:11). Whatever the ultimate verdict of science may be regarding the utility of death in regard to the human race, Scripture considers it abnormal, unnatural, a punishment, an infliction, the result of man’s wrongdoing and his transgression of the law of God. But death in Holy Writ is not a hopeless separation of body and soul. The New Testament sounds a note even clearer than the Old Testament; for Christ has brought life and immortality to light. We know, says Paul, that we have a building from God, after the dissolution of our tabernacle (2Co 5:1); and that is but the necessary corollary to Christ’s great utterance: I AM THE RESURRECTION, AND THE LIFE (Joh 11:25).
Literature.
Beck, Umriss der biblischen Seelenlehre, English translation; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Delitzsch, System of Biblical Psychology; Oehler, Old Testament Theology; Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch u. Geist, etc.; Dickson, Paul’s Use of the Flesh and Spirit; Cremer, Bibl.-theol. Worterbuch, etc.; Herzog, RE, articles Geist and Seele; Laid-law, Bible Doctrine of Man; Orr, God’s Image in Man; Davidson, Old Testament Theology.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Psychology
(Gr. psyche, mind or soul + logos, law) The science of the mind, its functions, structure and behavioral effects. In Aristotle, the science of mind, (De Anima), emphasizes mental functionsl; the Scholastics employed a faculty psychology. In Hume and the Mills, study of the data of conscious experience, termed association psychology. In Freud, the study of the unconscious (depth psychology). In behaviorism, the physiological study of physical and chemical responses. In Gestalt psychology, the study of organized psychic activity, .revealing the mind’s tendency toward the completion of patterns. Since Kant, psychology has been able to establish itself as an empirical, natural science without a priori metaphysical or theological commitments. The German romanticists (q.v.) and Hegel, who had developed a metaphysical psychology, had turned to cultural history to illustrate their theories of how the mind, conceived as an absolute, must manifest itself. Empirically they have suggested a possible field of exploration for the psychologist, namely, the study of mind in its cultural effects, viz. works of art, science, religion, social organization, etc. which are customarily studied by anthropologists in the case of “primitive” peoples. But it would be as difficult to separate anthropology from social psychology as to sharply distinguish so-called “primitive” peoples from “civilized” ones.
The various branches of psychology depend on the class of problems studied (a) physiological psychology is the most experimentally exact in so far as specific physiological processes and effects (vision, hearing, reaction-time, learning curves, fatigue, effects of drugs, etc.) are measurable and controllable. Wundt established the first laboratories of experimental psychology in Germany, Pavlov in Russia, James and Cattell in the U.S.; (b) pathological or abnormal psychology deals with cases of extreme deviations of behavior from what is regarded as “normal” (a statistical term often treated as a value); (c) social psychology deals with the behavior of groups as reflected in the behavior of individuals. Cf. Le Bon’s law that the mentality of a crowd or mob tends to descend to the level of a least common denominator, the lowest intelligence present.
Bibliography
H. Siebeck,
Gesch. der Psychol. (goes from Aristotle to Aquinas);
E. G. Boring,
History of Experimental Psychology;
Wm. James,
Principles of Psychology, 1890;
W. McDougall,
Intro. to Social Psychology;
J. B. Watson,
Psychology as Science of Behavior;
R. Woodworth,
Psychology;
Koffka,
Gestalt Psychology;
Khler,
Mentality of Apes;
Pavlov,
The Conditioned Reflex;
E. L. Thorndike,
Human Nature and the Social Order.
See Freud, Gestalt, Introspection, Mind, Subconscious.