Российский психологический журнал (Dec 2015)
Historical Psychology as the History of Psychological Knowledge
Abstract
The article considers pre-modern psychological knowledge as a phenomenon of culture and mentality, namely, in the context of historical psychology, the science which studies the development of an individual and his/her personality in history. Ancient-medieval theories of soul and the accompanying practices are called protopsychology. The author asserts that prototypes of science resemble fiction prototypes. They not just give materials about the development of knowledge; they are selectively and actively formed and combined for a current scientific phenomenon called psychology, in order to ensure continuity with the past. The author distinguishes prototypes in the reflexive discourse of pre-modernity. These are two genealogical lines leading to the present: psycheistry (reasoning about animated bodies) and egology (doctrines about spiritual-reflexive substances). Aristotle is the founder of the first direction. The second line starts with the Platonic and Pythagorean dualism of soul and body. Ancient knowledge of the soul is a historical basis for modern psychology. And if it recognizes one part of it as its source, another is of secondary importance, at best. The author corrects such a version of the origin of modern psychology through a genealogical analysis of the concept of “psyche”. Psychological-historical constructs are compared with the data of historical psychology. The genealogy of the psyche as the root base of the historical tree of knowledge designates the ground for its growing: ancient corporality. In their historical existence both prototypes of modern psychology are permeated with connotations of corporal culture. The author makes a reference to polypsychism – the system of pre-modern protopsychology – both the mental constitution of an era and knowledge about it. In conclusion the author brings forward and discusses the concept of anthropousus (using an individual) – the order of the use of scientific knowledge for creating a human form of a modern individual.
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