Category Archives: Psychology

Psychology (1-1000 CE): Comparative Analysis

January 19, 2026 – 4:46 PM

NOTE: Text in color contains Vinaire’s comments.

Divergent Paths and Shared Insights

Epistemological Frameworks

The first millennium of the Christian Era witnessed fundamentally different trajectories in Eastern and Western approaches to mental illness, yet certain themes emerged across cultures that suggest universal aspects of human psychological understanding.

Western approaches oscillated between naturalistic and supernatural explanations. The Greco-Roman medical tradition established by Hippocrates, systematized by Celsus, and elaborated by Galen provided a coherent naturalistic framework based on humoral imbalance and brain pathology. However, the rise of Christianity introduced competing supernatural explanations centered on sin, demonic possession, and divine punishment. Byzantine medicine preserved the Greco-Roman naturalistic tradition while existing within a Christian cultural matrix, creating a complex synthesis. The Desert Fathers developed a third approach—neither purely naturalistic nor crudely supernatural—that understood mental afflictions as spiritual-psychological states requiring disciplined cognitive and contemplative interventions.

Eastern approaches generally maintained more consistent naturalistic frameworks while integrating spiritual dimensions without contradiction. Indian Ayurvedic medicine understood mental illness through the lens of dosha imbalance while accommodating supernatural etiologies (the agantuja category of unmada) without allowing them to dominate the medical framework. Buddhist psychology grounded mental suffering in the universal mechanisms of attachment, aversion, and ignorance, locating the problem and the solution entirely within the structure of consciousness itself. Chinese medicine integrated emotional and physiological dimensions seamlessly, viewing mental disorders as disruptions in the flow of qi and imbalances among organ systems. Islamic medicine synthesized Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge while firmly rejecting supernatural explanations, insisting that mental illness was a medical condition requiring rational treatment.

Western approaches to mental illness oscillated between naturalistic and supernatural explanations; whereas, Eastern approaches generally maintained more consistent naturalistic frameworks while integrating spiritual dimensions without contradiction.

Therapeutic Modalities

Despite diverse theoretical frameworks, practical therapeutic interventions showed remarkable convergence across cultures. Pharmacological treatments were universal: Western physicians prescribed various herbal compounds, purgatives, and dietary modifications; Ayurvedic medicine employed extensive materia medica tailored to dosha imbalances; Chinese medicine developed complex herbal formulas; Islamic physicians like Alexander of Tralles and Al-Razi utilized hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations.

Psychotherapeutic interventions emerged independently across traditions. Roman physicians like Asclepiades advocated humane treatment including “light, music, and hydrotherapy”. Galen emphasized “counsel and education”. Ayurvedic texts prescribed treatments through “knowledge, specific knowledge, restraint, memory, and concentration”, using “exposure of the patient to mutually contradictory psychic factors” for emotional disturbances. Buddhist psychology developed systematic cognitive techniques for removing intrusive thoughts that closely parallel modern CBT. The Desert Fathers created contemplative practices for “guarding the heart” and managing the “demon of acedia”. Islamic physicians like Al-Razi pioneered psychotherapy, emphasizing positive therapeutic relationships and using sudden emotional reactions to catalyze healing.

Environmental and occupational therapies appeared across cultures. Greek and Roman physicians recommended travel, exercise, and pleasant environments. Byzantine hospitals provided comprehensive care. Islamic bimaristans employed “occupational therapy, aromatherapy, baths, and music therapy”. Chinese medicine emphasized appropriate environmental conditions for emotional balance. The convergence suggests these approaches addressed genuine therapeutic needs recognized across diverse cultural contexts.

Despite diverse theoretical frameworks, practical therapeutic interventions showed remarkable convergence across cultures. The convergence suggests these approaches addressed genuine therapeutic needs recognized across diverse cultural contexts.

The Role of Spirituality and Religion

The relationship between religious/spiritual frameworks and mental health treatment varied significantly. In the Christian West, increasing religious dominance often displaced medical frameworks, though this was neither universal nor uncontested. Byzantine physicians maintained professional medical approaches while practicing Christianity. Monastic psychology, rather than rejecting naturalistic understanding, developed sophisticated introspective techniques grounded in systematic observation of mental states.

In the East, spiritual and medical frameworks achieved greater integration. Ayurvedic medicine embedded treatment within a comprehensive philosophical worldview without the spiritual dimension overwhelming medical observation. Buddhism developed psychological systems that were simultaneously therapeutic practices and paths to enlightenment—the distinction between treating mental illness and achieving awakening was one of degree rather than kind. Chinese medicine integrated spiritual concepts like Shen with physiological observation seamlessly. Islamic medicine, while deeply embedded in Islamic civilization, insisted on the medical nature of mental illness and rational treatment, achieving a synthesis where faith informed ethics without dictating medical theory.

Institutional Developments

The development of specialized institutions for mental health care emerged most dramatically in the Islamic world with Al-Razi’s psychiatric ward and the bimaristan system. While Byzantine hospitals included medical care and Western monasteries provided refuge for the mentally distressed, these institutions did not develop the specialized, systematic approach to psychiatric treatment seen in Islamic medicine. The bimaristans represented “centers of healing, where monks utilized a combination of herbal remedies, dietary regulations, and spiritual rituals to address physical and mental health issues”, but with explicit medical organization and trained physician staff.

Chinese and Indian contexts developed different institutional patterns. While hospitals existed in ancient India and China, the available evidence from this period does not document specialized psychiatric facilities comparable to the Islamic bimaristans. However, monastic communities in both Buddhist and Hindu contexts provided structured environments for mental cultivation and healing, functioning as therapeutic communities even if not formally organized as medical institutions.

The development of specialized institutions for mental health care emerged most dramatically in the Islamic world. While other places provided refuge for the mentally distressed and medical care, these institutions did not develop the specialized, systematic approach to psychiatric treatment seen in Islamic medicine.

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Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Islamic Revolution

January 19, 2026 – 12:46 PM

Reference: SC: Psychology

NOTE: Text in color contains Vinaire’s comments.

The Birth of Psychiatric Medicine (9th-11th Centuries CE)

The Founding of Psychiatric Institutions

The Islamic Golden Age (roughly 8th-13th centuries CE) witnessed the most revolutionary advances in the treatment of mental illness during the first millennium. Islamic physicians synthesized Greek, Persian, and Indian medical knowledge while making groundbreaking innovations that would not be matched in the West until the modern era.

Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi (Rhazes, 865-925 CE) achieved a milestone in psychiatric history by establishing the first dedicated psychiatric ward in Baghdad. This represented a paradigmatic shift in how mental illness was conceptualized and treated. Al-Razi “viewed mental illnesses as conditions that required medical intervention, challenging the prevalent notions that attributed such ailments to supernatural causes or moral failings”. His approach was “revolutionary for his time”—he insisted that “mental disorders should be recognized and treated as medical conditions”.

In these psychiatric wards, Al-Razi “conducted thorough clinical observations of patients with psychiatric conditions and implemented treatment strategies involving diet, medication, occupational therapy, aromatherapy, baths, and music therapy”. The comprehensiveness of treatment reflected a holistic understanding that mental illness affected the whole person. Al-Razi “gave priority to the doctor-patient relationship” and “advised physicians on how to keep the respect and confidence of their patients”, recognizing that the therapeutic relationship itself was curative.

Al-Razi developed innovative psychotherapeutic approaches that anticipated modern psychotherapy by a millennium. He “advocated for psychotherapy,” emphasizing that “positive remarks from doctors could uplift patients, enhance their well-being, and facilitate a faster recovery”. He believed that “a sudden, intense emotional reaction could rapidly improve psychological, psychosomatic, and organic disorders”, employing what he called “a simple but dynamic approach” to psychotherapy. In one famous case, Al-Razi treated Prince Mansur of Ray for severe joint pain through an elaborate psychological intervention—staging an emotionally shocking confrontation in a bathhouse that successfully mobilized the prince to move when conventional treatments had failed.

Al-Razi made crucial diagnostic distinctions. He clarified that “a Majnun (insane) is not epileptic, as an epileptic person is otherwise healthy except during seizures”. He distinguished different types of melancholia, noting that “the reason is merely misdirected” rather than destroyed. Remarkably, he “asserted that religious compulsions could be overcome by reason to achieve better mental health,” accomplishing “a primary form of cognitive therapy for obsessive behavior”. He also advocated that “mental health and self-esteem are crucial factors influencing a person’s overall health”, anticipating modern biopsychosocial models.

The Islamic revolution was the insistence that mental disorders should be recognized and treated as medical conditions. The establishment of the first dedicated psychiatric ward in Baghdad represented a paradigmatic shift in how mental illness was conceptualized and treated. The therapeutic relationship was an important part of the treatment.

Comprehensive Biopsychosocial Systems

Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (9th century CE) was “the first to discuss the interconnectivity between physical and mental well-being by linking illness with the nafs (self/soul) to the development of physical ailments”. In his treatise Masalih al-Abdan wa al-Anfus (“Sustenance of the Body and Soul”), he “developed approaches that we would now view as cognitive and talking therapy”. Al-Balkhi’s interventions included instructing individuals “to keep helpful cognitions at hand during times of distress,” employing “persuasive talking, preaching, and advising,” differentiating “between normal and extreme emotional responses to situations,” and studying “the development of coping mechanisms for anger, fear, sadness, and obsessions”. This framework, connecting cognitions and pathological behaviors, bears striking resemblance to modern cognitive behavioral therapy.

Al-Balkhi was also notable for “distinguishing between neuroses and psychosis, classifying neuroses into four categories: fear and anxiety (al-khawf wa al-faza’), anger and aggression (al-ghadab wa al-haraq), sadness and depression (al-huzn wa al-inhizam), and obsessions (al-waswas)”. This categorical system demonstrated sophisticated clinical observation and represented an early psychiatric nosology.

Al-Akhawayni Bukhari (?-983 CE) gained such renown for his treatment of mentally ill patients that he became known as “Bejeshk-e Divanehgan” (The Doctor of the Insane). His work Hidayat contained detailed chapters on various mental conditions: “Mania,” “Malikhulia” (Melancholia), “Kabus” (Nightmare), “Ghotrab” (Dementia), and “Khonagh-o-Rahem” (Conversion Disorder). Al-Akhawayni made the crucial observation that melancholia “results from the impact of black bile on the brain”, explicitly localizing mental illness in neurological substrates.

He classified patients with melancholia into distinct subtypes based on clinical presentation. The first group exhibited “fear with no definite etiology, self-laughing, self-crying, and speaking meaninglessly”—symptoms we would now associate with major depressive disorder with psychotic features. A second group claimed to possess stunning abilities, “introduced themselves as a prophet or king,” or believed they had “turned into other beings, like hens and roosters, and mimicked their behaviors”—presentations consistent with grandiose delusions seen in bipolar disorder with psychotic features or schizophrenia. Al-Akhawayni emphasized nutritional interventions, believing that “some foods, such as wholemeal bread, beef, and salted fish, can be beneficial to the melancholics’ condition”.

The interconnectivity between physical and mental well-being was emphasized by linking illness with the inner self, that has desires, emotions, and free will, to the development of physical ailments. Clear distinction was made between neuroses and psychosis.

The Synthesis of Avicenna

Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037 CE) produced The Canon of Medicine, which “was the basis for studying medicine in the East and the West for multiple centuries”. The Canon “discusses, among other things, the structure of psychological apparatus of human being and the connection of psychological functions with the brain as well as the role of psyche in etiology of somatic diseases”. Avicenna’s work represented the pinnacle of medieval understanding of mental illness, integrating philosophical psychology with clinical observation.

Avicenna provided detailed phenomenological descriptions of mental disorders. He distinguished between early and chronic phases of melancholia: the early phase involved “suspicions of evil, fear without cause, quick anger, involuntary muscle movements, dizziness, and tinnitus,” while the chronic phase showed “moaning, deep suspicion, profound sadness, restlessness, and delusions” including fears “that the sky may fall on one’s head” or of “being swallowed by the earth”. Avicenna was “among the first physicians to document that anger often serves as a transitional state between melancholic depression and mania—what psychiatry now calls the ‘switch’ phenomenon”.

Remarkably, Avicenna recognized what “wouldn’t be formally recognized by modern psychiatry for nearly a millennium: what we now call ‘mixed states,’ where features of depression and mania occur together”. He noted that some melancholic patients would show “increased libido, involuntary laughter, and even grandiose thoughts like imagining ‘that one is king’”.

Avicenna explored the psychology of death anxiety, identifying it as “a universal fear” with three cognitive causes: “(a) ignorance as to what death is, (b) uncertainty of what is to follow after death and (c) supposing that after death, the soul may cease to exist”. This analysis demonstrated sophisticated understanding of how cognitive interpretations generate emotional states.

Avicenna’s understanding of psychosomatic medicine was centuries ahead of his time. “He recognized the influence of emotional and mental states on physical health, suggesting that pain perception could be shaped by factors such as stress, anxiety, and sadness,” while “positive emotions and mental tranquility could reduce it”. This dual focus on psychological and physical conditions made it “critical for physicians to address both” aspects of patient care.

There was better understanding of the structure of psychological apparatus of human being, the connection of psychological functions with the brain, the role of psyche in the causation of somatic diseases, and of psychosomatic medicine.

Institutional Care and Cultural Context

The Islamic world developed sophisticated institutional care for mental illness through bimaristans (hospitals). These institutions had “separate wards for different illnesses, patients suffering from anxiety or showing signs of psychological distress were treated” with comprehensive modalities. The Mansuri Hospital in Cairo provided “medical treatment for Muslim patients, male and female, rich and poor, from Cairo and the countryside”, emphasizing accessibility regardless of social status. These hospitals included “lecture rooms, a library, as well as a chapel and a mosque”, integrating medical education with treatment.

The cultural context was crucial: “During the Islamic Golden Age, mental disorders were seen as phenomena that existed, requiring clinical assessment and treatment, and categorized and assessed systematically by employing rational judgements and observation rather than cultural beliefs based on supernatural causes”. While “the use of religious and medical forms of healing co-occurred—for instance, the use of prayer and ritual healing in addition to using treatments according to the medical model of the time”—the medical framework remained primary. This stood in stark contrast to medieval Christian Europe, where “discourse of mental illness as result of demons, spirits, spiritual distress, and sin dominated”.

The Islamic world developed sophisticated institutional care for mental illness through hospitals. These hospitals included lecture rooms, a library, as well as a chapel and a mosque, integrating medical education with treatment.

Notes:

Nafs (نَفْس) is an Arabic word meaning the self, soul, psyche, or ego, central to Islamic thought, representing the inner self with desires, emotions, and free will, having both negative (commanding evil) and positive (tranquil) states, requiring spiritual struggle to tame its lower instincts (like lust, anger) towards a higher, peaceful state, often described in stages (like the commanding self, reproaching self, tranquil self). It’s the aspect of the spirit interacting with the physical body, driving actions and choices, distinct from the pure spirit (ruh) but linked to it.

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Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Eastern Trajectory

January 15, 2026 – 2:42 PM

Reference: SC: Psychology

NOTE: Text in color contains Vinaire’s comments.

Holistic Systems and Cognitive Therapies

Indian Medical Psychology (1st Century Onward):
The Ayurvedic Framework

Ancient Indian medicine developed sophisticated understandings of mental illness centuries before the Common Era, but the classical texts were composed and systematized during the early centuries CE. The Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita (composed in their current forms during the 1st-2nd centuries CE, though based on much earlier oral traditions) contain detailed expositions of mental disorders.

The primary Ayurvedic category for major mental disorders was unmada, literally meaning “frenzy, madness, or mental derangement”. The Charaka Samhita defined unmada as “the excessive wandering of the intellect, mind, and memory,” a condition that encompassed what modern psychiatry would classify across multiple diagnostic categories including various forms of psychosis, severe mood disorders, and organic mental syndromes. The text specified that unmada was “brought on by the consumption of impure food, blasphemy, and mental shock”, reflecting a biopsychosocial understanding that integrated dietary, spiritual, and traumatic etiologies.

Ayurvedic medicine classified unmada into five subtypes based on which of the three fundamental physiological principles (doshas) were vitiated. Vataja unmada resulted from vitiation of the vata humor (associated with movement and the nervous system), pittaja unmada from vitiation of pitta (associated with metabolism and transformation), kaphaja unmada from vitiation of kapha (associated with structure and lubrication), sannipataja unmada from simultaneous vitiation of all three doshas, and agantuja unmada from exogenous causes including possession by supernatural entities. This classification system demonstrated remarkable sophistication, recognizing that similar behavioral presentations could arise from fundamentally different pathophysiological processes.

The Ayurvedic understanding of mental illness was deeply integrated with its model of personality and consciousness. Mental health was understood to depend upon the balance of the trigunas—three fundamental qualities of mind: sattva (harmony, goodness, clarity), rajas (passion, activity, restlessness), and tamas (inertia, darkness, ignorance). “Improving Sattva and achieving a balance between Rajas and Tamas are necessary for mental well-being”. The hrdaya (emotional heart and seat of intellect) was identified as the origin point where aggravated doshas would travel into the mental channels, “subsequently causing an imbalance within the mind”.

Treatment approaches combined pharmacological, psychological, and spiritual interventions. The Charaka Samhita prescribed that “the mind should be treated with knowledge, specific knowledge, restraint, memory, and concentration”. Therapeutic methods included herbal medicines, dietary modifications, massage (abhyanga), fumigation (dhuma), music therapy, and psychotherapeutic interventions. For unmada caused by loss of something the patient loved, “he is made to regain a similar object. Simultaneously, he is consoled with pleasing assurances of friends as a result of which he becomes free from the ailment”. For unmada caused by emotions—“passion, grief, fear, anger, exhilaration, jealousy and greed”—physicians employed “exposure of the patient to mutually contradictory psychic factors” to restore equilibrium.

Indian texts written during the 1st-2nd centuries CE, define insanity as “the excessive wandering of the intellect, mind, and memory, brought on by the consumption of impure food, blasphemy, and mental shock.” Treatment approaches combined pharmacological, psychological, and spiritual interventions.

Buddhist Psychology (1st-5th Centuries):
Cognitive Approaches to Mental Suffering

Buddhism developed a comprehensive psychological system that distinguished between general human suffering (dukkha) and specific mental illnesses. The Buddha himself “distinguished between two kinds of illness (rogo): physical illness (kāyiko rogo) and mental illness (cetasiko rogo)”. The Buddha attributed mental illness to “the arising of mental defilements (Kleshas) which are ultimately based on the unwholesome roots (three poisons) of greed, hatred, and confusion”.

From the Buddhist perspective, “everyone who is not an awakened being is in some sense mentally ill”—as the Buddha stated in the Pali canon, “those beings are hard to find in the world who can admit freedom from mental disease even for one moment, save only those in whom the asavas mental fermentations are destroyed”. This radical claim did not pathologize normal human experience but rather established enlightenment as the standard of perfect mental health. The Buddhist approach to mental suffering was fundamentally therapeutic and pragmatic—rather than metaphysical speculation, Buddhism offered “a method of cleansing the stream of consciousness from ‘contaminations’ and ‘defilements’”.

Buddhist texts identified five major hindrances (nivarana) that prevent mental cultivation and contribute to psychological distress: sense desire, hostility, sloth-torpor, restlessness-worry, and doubt. The therapeutic methodology for removing negative or intrusive thoughts, detailed in the Vitakkasanthana Sutta (MN 20, “The Removal of Distracting Thoughts”), prescribed five cognitive techniques that strikingly anticipate modern cognitive-behavioral therapy:

Focus on an opposite or incompatible thought or object
Ponder the perils and disadvantages of the thought and its harmful consequences
Ignore the thought and distract oneself through another activity
Reflect on the removal or stopping of the causes of the target thought
Make a forceful mental effort to suppress the thought

Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE), founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, revolutionized Buddhist philosophy and psychology through his concept of sunyata (emptiness). Nagarjuna’s philosophy functioned as “linguistic therapy: it uses language to reveal how language deceives us”. He argued that mental and emotional turmoil arises from clinging to conceptual elaborations (prapancha)—fixed ideas about the nature of reality, self, and phenomena. These conceptualizations “do not accurately reflect how the world actually is” and generate suffering because we mistake linguistic constructs for reality.

Nagarjuna demonstrated through rigorous dialectical analysis that all phenomena, including mental states and the self, lack intrinsic existence (svabhava). This “cognitive default” of projecting substantial existence onto things reflects “our tendency to become attached to things, reflecting a need for solidity and permanence, forever frustrated by the certainty of death”. The therapeutic goal was not to replace deluded thinking with a correct philosophical view but rather to let go of all fixed conceptual positions. “Our emotional and mental turmoil is replaced by a beatitude or serenity (shiva) that cannot be grasped but can be lived”.

Vasubandhu (fl. 4th-5th century CE), philosopher and co-founder of the Yogacara school, developed a sophisticated psychological system centered on consciousness and its transformations. Vasubandhu elaborated the theory of eight types of consciousness: the five sense consciousnesses, empirical consciousness (mano-vijnana), a self-aggrandizing mentality (manas), and the alaya-vijnana (storehouse consciousness). The storehouse consciousness explained psychological continuity and the mechanisms of karmic conditioning—the “seed” (bija) of each experience is “stored subliminally and released into a new experience,” providing “a quasi-causal explanation for the functioning of karmic retribution”.

Vasubandhu’s analysis revealed that what we take to be an external objective world is actually constructed within consciousness itself. “We are fooled by consciousness into believing that those things which we perceive and appropriate within consciousness are actually outside our cognitive sphere”. This insight—that “cognition takes place only in consciousness and nowhere else”—anticipated by over a millennium Western philosophical idealism and phenomenology. The therapeutic implications were profound: suffering could be addressed by transforming the very basis of consciousness. “Buddhism is a method of cleansing the stream of consciousness from ‘contaminations’ and ‘defilements’”, achieved through ashraya-paravritti (overturning the basis) whereby consciousness (vijnana) is gradually transformed into unmediated cognition (jnana).

From the Buddhist perspective, “everyone who is not an awakened being is in some sense mentally ill.” The Buddha attributed mental illness to “the arising of mental defilements which are ultimately based on the unwholesome roots of greed, hatred, and confusion”. Buddhism offered “a method of cleansing the stream of consciousness from ‘contaminations’ and ‘defilements’.”

Chinese Medical Psychology (1st-10th Centuries):
The Integration of Emotion and Physiology

Traditional Chinese Medicine developed during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) and flourished through the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), creating a comprehensive system for understanding the relationship between emotional states and physiological processes. The foundational text, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic), described the Shen (spirit or consciousness) as residing in the Heart and governing consciousness. The Shen concept evolved from a mystical force into “a clinical entity in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), influencing diagnostics and treatments for emotional and mental imbalances”.

Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage, c. 200 CE) built upon this foundation, addressing “how external pathogens can disrupt the Shen, leading to symptoms like delirium or restlessness”. The text emphasized that “the Heart is the sovereign of all organs and represents the consciousness of one’s being. It is responsible for intelligence, wisdom, and spiritual transformation”.

Chinese medicine conceptualized mental disorders as arising from disruptions in the flow of qi (vital energy) and imbalances among the internal organ systems. “According to Chinese medicine theory, MDD major depressive disorder is mostly characterized by emotional disorders and stagnation of qi, which leads to a loss of regulation of the liver, a loss of function of the spleen, and a loss of nourishment of the heart”. The system recognized both external emotional factors (worry, fear, anger) and internal factors (the qi of the organs being easily disturbed) as contributing to mental illness.

Treatment modalities integrated herbal pharmacology with emotional and spiritual interventions. Classical formulas like Xiao Yao San (Free and Easy Wanderer Powder), first recorded during the Song Dynasty (960-1127 CE) but based on earlier traditions, have been “used in the treatment of psychiatric disorders for thousands of years”. The formula’s eight herbs were designed to address liver qi stagnation, a fundamental pattern underlying many emotional disorders. Chinese physicians documented successful treatments of hysteria, insomnia, and depression using these formulas, with detailed case records surviving from the medieval period.

Traditional Chinese Medicine created a comprehensive system for understanding the relationship between emotional states and physiological processes. Chinese medicine conceptualized mental disorders as arising from disruptions in the flow of qi (vital energy) and imbalances among the internal organ systems.

Notes:

Asava (or Āsava), a Pali/Sanskrit term in Buddhism, refers to mental effluents, defilements, or cankers like sensual desire, craving for existence, wrong views, and ignorance that “flow” from the mind, perpetuating the cycle of rebirth (samsara) and suffering.
Alaya-vijnana (or ālaya-vijñāna) refers to the “storehouse consciousness,” a foundational concept in Mahayana Buddhism (especially the Yogācāra school) representing the deep, subconscious repository where all karmic seeds and impressions from past experiences are stored, influencing present perceptions. It’s the basis for identity and rebirth, a deep level of mind holding everything.

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Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Western Trajectory

January 15, 2026 – 12:39 PM

Reference: SC: Psychology

NOTE: Text in color contains Vinaire’s comments.

From Greco-Roman Naturalism to Christian Supernaturalism

Early Imperial Rome (1st-2nd Centuries):
Medical Systematization

The opening centuries of the Christian Era marked the culmination of Greco-Roman medical thought regarding mental disorders.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE-50 CE) produced the first systematic taxonomy of mental illnesses in his encyclopedic work De Medicina. His classification system represented a sophisticated attempt to categorize the diverse manifestations of psychological distress into distinct disease entities: phrenitis (delirium accompanied by fever), melancholia (depression), a disorder characterized by false images and disordered judgment (resembling modern schizophrenia), delirium arising from fear, lethargus (coma), and morbus comitialis (epilepsy). Celsus introduced the term insania (insanity) into medical vocabulary and advocated for a range of treatments that combined harsh interventions—bleeding, frightening the patient, emetics, total darkness—with more humane approaches such as music therapy, travel, sport, reading aloud, and massage.

Aretaeus of Cappadocia (active in the second half of the 2nd century CE) advanced clinical psychiatry through meticulous observation and detailed case documentation. His most significant contribution was recognizing the cyclical nature of certain mental conditions, observing that some patients alternated between periods of profound melancholia and states of mania—an early description of what contemporary psychiatry recognizes as bipolar disorder. Aretaeus differentiated nervous diseases from mental disorders and provided classic accounts of various forms of insanity, including hysteria, headaches, mania, and melancholia, describing patients as experiencing “aversion to food, despondency, sleeplessness, irritability, and restlessness”.

Galen of Pergamum (129-216 CE) synthesized and expanded upon Hippocratic humoral theory, asserting that mental disturbances resulted primarily from humoral imbalances in the brain that damaged its functioning. His therapeutic approach aimed at re-establishing the balance of bodily humors through evacuations, drugs, and dietary modifications. Galen’s most innovative contribution was his recognition of psychosomatic relationships—he famously documented a case in which a female patient’s pulse became irregular when the name of a specific male dancer was mentioned, leading him to conclude that the patient was “in love” and demonstrating that “thinking can lead to physiological consequences”. This observation represented “the first clear description of a psychosomatic (mind-body) relationship”. Galen emphasized the importance of counsel and education in treating psychological problems, recommending that therapy involve “a mature, unbiased older person” who would confront patients whose passions—anger, jealousy—were responsible for their psychological difficulties.

A classification system for various mental illnesses is useful to identify physical drugs and procedures that have proved to be helpful; but the ultimate source of all mental conditions are impressions engraved in a person’s subconscious that require spiritual means, such as, meditation to assimilate them.

The Christian Transformation (3rd-5th Centuries):
The Return of Supernatural Explanations

The rise of Christianity as the dominant religious and intellectual force in the Roman Empire precipitated a profound shift in explanations of mental illness. As Christianity spread, “ideas about sin dominated, and the ‘psychotherapists’ of the era were priests rather than physicians”. The Church became “the primary authority on health and illness, and religious interpretations replaced medical ones”. Mental disorders were increasingly viewed through the lens of demonology—the belief that demons or evil spirits could possess humans and cause abnormal behaviors. Church authorities often interpreted unusual behaviors, emotional disturbances, or psychological symptoms as evidence of demonic influence or punishment for sin. This represented a regression from the naturalistic explanations that had characterized Greco-Roman medicine.

Yet the picture was more complex than simple rejection of medical knowledge.

Tertullian (c. 160-c. 220 CE), despite his theological rigor, “showed greater respect for physicians than many of his pagan contemporaries” and demonstrated extensive knowledge of contemporary medical thought. His anthropology emphasized “the indivisible unity of flesh and soul,” which paradoxically led him to maintain an “elevated view of the body” and appreciation for medical treatment. Early Christians generally “accepted Greco-Roman ideas that disease results from an imbalance of the humors and disconnect between mind and body”, attempting to remove excess humors through purgative medicines, bloodletting, and cauterization. Church fathers like Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and others “saw medicine as God’s gift”.

Origen (c. 184-c. 253 CE) developed a sophisticated theological psychology grounded in Platonic philosophy. His doctrine of the preexistence of souls posited that God originally created incorporeal “spiritual intelligences” (psychaí) devoted to contemplating their Creator. As the “fervor of the divine fire cooled,” these intelligences grew “bored of contemplating God” and their love “cooled off” (psýchesthai), transforming them into souls (psychē) encased in material bodies. For Origen, mental and spiritual conditions reflected the degree to which a soul had fallen from its original state of contemplation. He theorized that “a single lifetime is not enough for a soul to achieve salvation, for certain souls require more education or ‘healing’ than others”, prefiguring later concepts of spiritual development and therapeutic education. Origen’s framework integrated body and soul: “the purity and subtleness of the body with which a soul is enveloped depends upon the moral development and perfection of the soul to which it is joined”.

Confession of sins when done voluntarily does help alleviate mental disorders, but medical treatment is still necessary to handle certain aspects of mental illnesses. Spiritual development does help improve a person’s mental condition.

Monastic Psychology (4th-5th Centuries):
The Desert Fathers and Acedia

The emergence of Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia between the 3rd and 7th centuries created a unique laboratory for psychological observation and spiritual therapy. The Desert Fathers, who sought lives of solitude, manual labor, contemplation, and silence, developed sophisticated understandings of mental and spiritual afflictions. These monks, who “we could also say were the first therapists,” created recommendations to heal the “sicknesses of the soul”.

Evagrius of Pontus (346-399 CE) produced Antirrhetikos, “the first and most complete early Christian book on demonology”. He systematized eight “wicked thoughts” (logismoi) that afflict Christians: gluttony (gastrimargia), sexual infidelity (porneia), greed (phylargia), pride (hyperephania), despair (lype), anger (orge), boasting (kenodoxia), and acedia (akedia). Acedia, “the most troublesome of all” the evil thoughts, was characterized by spiritual listlessness, torpor, restlessness, boredom, and indifference to religious practice. Evagrius associated acedia with “the plague that stalks at noonday” (Psalm 91:6), calling it “the noonday demon” that struck when monks were at their weakest—when the midday sun beat down, their energy waned, and their fasting stomachs growled. The afflicted monk experienced “an inert state without pain or care,” becoming “resistant to prayer and devotional reading,” unmoved by “rebuke or exhortation,” “spiritually numb and completely inert”.

John Cassian (360-435 CE), Evagrius’s student, transmitted these insights to Western monasticism through his Institutes and Conferences. Cassian’s vivid description of acedia’s manifestation in a monk’s cell captures its psychological reality: “He fancies that he is making no progress… he complains that he is unfruitful… he looks anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him”. Cassian’s works profoundly influenced Western Christian spirituality—Benedict prescribed reading the Conferences in his monastic rule, and later Western thinkers including Gregory the Great, Alcuin, and Thomas Aquinas drew upon Cassian’s psychological insights. The monastic response to acedia involved “guarding the heart,” sobriety, hospitality, and meditation—practices that anticipated modern mindfulness-based therapies by nearly two millennia.

The emergence of Christian monasticism between the 3rd and 7th centuries created a unique laboratory for psychological observation and spiritual therapy. They led to meditation and mindfulness-based therapies.

Byzantine Medical Continuity (4th-7th Centuries):
Preserving and Advancing Greco-Roman Knowledge

While Western Europe increasingly interpreted mental illness through supernatural frameworks, the Byzantine Empire maintained and developed the Greco-Roman medical tradition. Byzantine physicians followed Hippocratic theory, diagnosing illnesses through examination of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) connected to particular seasons and qualities (hot, cold, dry, moist). Treatment involved dietary changes, pharmaceuticals, bloodletting, and surgery to expunge problematic humors.

Oribasius (c. 320-400/403 CE), physician to Emperor Julian the Apostate, created Collectiones medicae (Medical Collections), “a kind of encyclopedia comprising all the anatomical and physiological medical knowledge of the time”. Though only about 25 of the original 70+ volumes survive, Oribasius’s work “paved the way for Galenism, as he was the first to consider Galen’s works as fundamental for the progress of medicine”. His systematic compilation preserved extensive material from Galen and earlier physicians that would otherwise have been lost, creating “a precious source on the history of ancient and early Byzantine medicine”.

Aetius of Amida (late 5th/early 6th century CE), physician to Emperor Justinian I, produced the Tetrabiblion (16 books), a comprehensive medical textbook that “gives significant information about surgical approaches” and detailed descriptions of various conditions. Aetius was reportedly “the first Greek physician who embraced Christianity”, representing the gradual integration of Christian identity with medical practice. His work “influenced Islamic and European medicine” and drew upon the knowledge of earlier physicians including Rufus of Ephesus, Leonidas, Soranus, and Philumenos.

Alexander of Tralles (c. 525-c. 605 CE) was “one of the most eminent physicians in the Byzantine Empire” who gained “great reputation, not only at Rome, but wherever he traveled in Spain, Gaul, and Italy”. His Therapeutics, written from extensive practical experience in extreme old age, demonstrated sophisticated understanding of mental disorders. Alexander classified melancholia into subtypes based on humoral imbalances: black bile melancholia characterized by depressed mood, anxiety, and delusions; yellow bile melancholia characterized by anger. He recognized that “anger resulted when one transitioned from melancholia to mania,” anticipating by over a millennium modern psychiatry’s recognition of “switch phenomena” in mood disorders. Alexander’s work described over 600 pharmaceutical preparations, including his Twelve Books which “exemplify the use of medicine to treat all types of diseases, including what he described as ‘melancholy’ which modern doctors would describe as depression”.

Paul of Aegina (c. 625-c. 690 CE), educated at Alexandria’s medical school, was acclaimed as the “Father of Early Medical Writing”. His Medical Compendium in Seven Books represented the culmination of Byzantine medical knowledge—“for many years in the Byzantine Empire, his work contained the sum of all available medical knowledge and was unrivaled in its accuracy and completeness”. Paul distinguished 62 types of pulse associated with various diseases and dealt extensively with apoplexy and epilepsy. His surgical expertise was legendary: he performed tonsillectomy, trephination, paracentesis, lithotomy, and breast amputation. Paul’s work achieved extraordinary influence in the Islamic world—his reputation “seems to have been very great, and it is said that he was especially consulted by midwives, whence he received the name of Al-kawabeli or ‘the Accoucheur’”. The Arabic translation by Hunayn ibn Ishaq in the 9th century transmitted Byzantine medical knowledge to Islamic civilization, where it would be transformed and expanded.

While Western Europe increasingly interpreted mental illness through supernatural frameworks, the Byzantine Empire maintained and developed the Greco-Roman medical tradition.

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Psychology Timeline (Modern Period)

January 15, 2026 – 5:59 AM

Reference: SC: Psychology

West

1800s

c. 1800 – Franz Joseph Gall developed cranioscopy, the measurement of the skull to determine psychological characteristics, which was later renamed phrenology; it is now discredited.
1807 – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel published Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind), which describes his thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectical method, according to which knowledge pushes forwards to greater certainty, and ultimately towards knowledge of the noumenal world.
1808 – Johann Christian Reil coined the term “psychiatry”.

1810s

1812 – Benjamin Rush became one of the earliest advocates of humane treatment for the mentally ill with the publication of Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook on psychiatry.

1820s

1829 – John Stuart Mill‘s father James Mill published Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (2 vols.).

1840s

1840 – Frederick Augustus Rauch (1806–1841) published Psychology, or a View of the Human Soul, including Anthropology
1843 – Forbes Benignus Winslow (1810–1874) published The Plea of Insanity in Criminal Cases, helping establish the plea of insanity in criminal cases in Britain.
1844 – Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, the first exposition on anxiety.
1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage had a 3-foot rod driven through his brain and jaw in an explosives accident, permanently changing his personality, revolutionizing scientific opinion about brain functions being localizable.
1849 – Søren Kierkegaard published The Sickness Unto Death.

1850s

1852 – Hermann Lotze published Medical Psychology or Physiology of the Soul.
1856 – Hermann Lotze began publishing his 3-volume magnum opus Mikrokosmos (1856–64), arguing that natural laws of inanimate objects apply to human minds and bodies but have the function of enabling us to aim for the values set by the deity, thus making room for aesthetics.
1859 – Pierre Briquet published Traite Clinique et Therapeutique de L’Hysterie.

1860s

1860s – Franciscus Donders first used human reaction time to infer differences in cognitive processing.
1860 – Gustav Theodor Fechner published Elements of Psychophysics, founding the subject of psychophysics.
1861 – Paul Broca discovered an area in the left cerebral hemisphere that is important for speech production, now known as Broca’s area, founding neuropsychology.
1869 – Francis Galton published Hereditary Genius, arguing for eugenics. He went on to found psychometrics, differential psychology, and the lexical hypothesis of personality.

1870s

1872 – Douglas Spalding published his discovery of psychological imprinting.
1874 – Wilhelm Wundt published Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology), the first textbook of experimental psychology.
1878 – G. Stanley Hall was awarded the first PhD on a psychological topic from Harvard (in philosophy).
1879 – Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany.

1880s

1882 – The Society for Psychical Research was founded in England.
1883 – G. Stanley Hall opened the first American experimental psychology research laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
1883 – Emil Kraepelin published Compendium der Psychiatrie.
1884 – Ivan Pavlov began studying the digestive secretion of animals.
1884 – Tourette’s Syndrome was first described.
1885 – Hermann Ebbinghaus published Über das Gedächtnis (On Memory), a groundbreaking work based on self-experiments, first describing the learning curve, forgetting curve, and spacing effect.
1886 – John Dewey published the first American textbook on psychology, titled Psychology.
1886 – Vladimir Bekhterev established the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Russia at Kazan University.
1886 – Sigmund Freud began private practice in Vienna.
1887 – Georg Elias Müller opened the 2nd German experimental psychology research laboratory in Göttingen.
1887 – George Trumbull Ladd (Yale) published Elements of Physiological Psychology, the first American textbook to include a substantial amount of information on the new experimental form of the discipline.
1887 – James McKeen Cattell founded an experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, the 3rd in the United States.
1887 – G. Stanley Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology with a $500 contribution supplied by Robert Pearsall Smith of the American Society for Psychical Research.
1888 – William Lowe Bryan founded the United States’ 4th experimental psychology laboratory at Indiana University.
1888 – Joseph Jastrow founded the United States’ 5th experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
1888 – G. Stanley Hall left Johns Hopkins for the presidency of the newly founded Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts
1889 – James Mark Baldwin published the first volume of his Handbook of Psychology, titled “Sense and Intellect”.
1889 – Edmund Sanford, a former student of G. Stanley Hall founded the United States’ 6th experimental psychology laboratory at Clark University.
1889 – Edward Cowles founded the United States’ 7th experimental psychology laboratory at the McLean Asylum in Waverley, Massachusetts
1889 – Harry Kirke Wolfe founded the United States’ 8th experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Nebraska.

1890s

1890 – Christian von Ehrenfels published On the Qualities of Form, founding Gestalt psychology.
1890 – William James published The Principles of Psychology.
1890 – James Hayden Tufts founded the United States’ 9th experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Michigan.
1890 – G. T. W. Patrick founded the United States’ 10th experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Iowa.
1890 – James McKeen Cattell left Pennsylvania for Columbia University where he founded the United States’ 11th experimental psychology laboratory.
1890 – James Mark Baldwin founded the first permanent experimental psychology laboratory in the British Empire at the University of Toronto.
1891 – Frank Angell founded the United States’ 12th experimental psychology laboratory at the Cornell University.
1891 – Edvard Westermarck described the Westermarck effect, where people raised early in life in close domestic proximity later become desensitized to close sexual attraction, raising theories about the incest taboo.
1892 – G. Stanley Hall et al. founded the American Psychological Association (APA).
1892 – Edward Bradford Titchener took a professorship at Cornell University, replacing Frank Angell who left for Stanford University.
1892 – Edward Wheeler Scripture founded the experimental psychology laboratory at Yale University, the 19th in United States.
1892–1893 – Charles A. Strong opened the experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Chicago, the 20th in the United States, at which James Rowland Angell conducted the first experiments of functionalism in 1896.
1894 – Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman to be granted a PhD in Psychology after she studied under E. B. Titchener at Cornell University.
1894 – James McKeen Cattell and James Mark Baldwin founded the Psychological Review to compete with Hall‘s American Journal of Psychology.
1895 – Gustave Le Bon published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.
1896 – John Dewey published the paper The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, founding functionalism.
1896 – The first psychological clinic was opened at the University of Pennsylvania by Lightner Witmer; although often celebrated as marking the birth of clinical psychology, it was focused primarily on educational matters.
1896 – Edward B. Titchener, student of Wilhelm Wundt and originator of the terms “structuralism” and “functionalism” published An Outline of Psychology.
1897 – Havelock Ellis published Sexual Inversion.
1898 – Boris Sidis published The Psychology of Suggestion: A Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society.
1899 – On 4 November Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung), marking the beginning of psychoanalysis, which attempts to deal with the Oedipal complex.

1900s

1900 – Sigmund Freud published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
1903 – John B. Watson graduated from the University of Chicago; his dissertation on rat behavior has been described as a “classic of developmental psychobiology” by historian of psychology Donald Dewsbury.
1903 – Helen Thompson Woolley published her doctoral dissertation, The Mental Traits of Sex, for which she had conducted the first experimental test of sex differences.
1904 – Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for his studies of conditioning. This was the first Prize given for research adopted by psychologists.
1904 – Charles Spearman published the article General Intelligence in the American Journal of Psychology, introducing the g factor theory of intelligence.
1905- Mary Calkins was the first woman elected president of the American Psychological Association.
1905 – Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the Binet-Simon scale to identify students needing extra help, marking the beginning of standardized psychological testing.
1905 – Edward Thorndike published the law of effect.
1905 – Sigmund Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.
1906 – The Journal of Abnormal Psychology was founded by Morton Prince, for which Boris Sidis was an associate editor and significant contributor.
1908 – Sigmund Freud published the paper On the Sexual Theories of Children, introducing the concept of penis envy; he also published the paper ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness.
1908 – Wilfred Trotter published the first paper explaining the herd instinct.
1909 – Sigmund Freud lectured at Clark University, winning over the U.S. establishment.

1910s

1910 – Sigmund Freud founded the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), with Carl Jung as the first president, and Otto Rank as the first secretary.
1910 – Grace Helen Kent and J. Rosanoff published the Kent-Rosanoff Free Association Test
1910 – Boris Sidis opened the private Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute at Maplewood Farms in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the treatment of nervous patients using the latest scientific methods.
1911 – Alfred Adler left Freud’s Psychoanalytic Group to form his own school of thought, accusing Freud of overemphasizing sexuality and basing his theory on his own childhood.
1911 – The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) was founded.
1911 – William McDougall, founder of Hormic Psychology published Body and Mind: A History and Defence of Animism, claiming that there is an animating principle in Nature and that the mind guides evolution.
1912 – Max Wertheimer published Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement, helping found Gestalt Psychology
1913 – Carl Jung developed his own theories, which became known as Analytical Psychology.
1913 – Jacob L. Moreno pioneered group psychotherapy methods in Vienna, which emphasized spontaneity and interaction; they later became known as psychodrama and sociometry.
1913 – John B. Watson published Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, sometimes known as “The Behaviorist Manifesto”.
1913 – Hugo Münsterberg published Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, considered today as the first book on Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
1914 – Boris Sidis published The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology, where he provided the scientific foundation for the field of psychology, and detailed his theory of the moment consciousness.
1917 – Sigmund Freud published Introduction to Psychoanalysis.

1920s

1920 – John B. Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner conducted the Little Albert experiment, using classical conditioning to make a young boy afraid of white rats.
1921 – Sigmund Freud published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
1921 – Jacob L. Moreno conducted the first large scale public psychodrama session at the Komedienhaus in Vienna; he moved to New York in 1925.
1921 – Melanie Klein began to develop her technique of analyzing children.
1922 – Karen Horney began publishing a series of 14 papers (last in 1937) questioning Freud’s theories on women, founding feminist psychology.
1922 – Boris Sidis published Nervous Ills: Their Cause and a Cure, a popularization of his work concerning the subconscious and the treatment of psychopathic disease.
1923 – Sigmund Freud published The Ego and the Id.
1924 – Jacob Robert Kantor founded interbehavioral psychology based on John Dewey’s psychology and Albert Einstein’s relativity theory.
1924 – Otto Rank published The Trauma of Birth, coining the term “pre-Oedipal”. Freud had originally praised him for such, but changed his stance and as such caused their falling out.
1926 – Otto Rank gave the lecture “The Genesis of the Object Relation”, founding object relations theory.
1927 – Ivan Pavlov published Conditioned Reflexes, containing his theory of classical conditioning.
1928 – Jean Piaget published Judgment and Reasoning in the Child.
1928 – Shoma Morita published Morita Therapy: The True Nature of Shinkeishitsu (Anxiety-based Disorders), which contains his peripheral theory of consciousness, while noting Freud’s theory of the unconscious. (Translation by A. Kondo, Edited by P. LeVine in 1998, SUNY Press)
1929 – Edwin Boring published A History of Experimental Psychology, pioneering the history of psychology.
1929 – Lev Vygotsky founded cultural-historical psychology.

1930s

1930 – Edwin Boring discussed the Boring figure.
1931 – Gordon Allport et al. published the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, which defines six major value types.
1932 – Journal of Personality founded as first personality psychology research periodical originally titled Character and Personality.
1933 – Pyotr Gannushkin published Manifestations of Psychopathies.
1933 – Clark L. Hull published Hypnosis and Suggestibility, proving that hypnosis is not sleep and founding the modern study of hypnosis.
1933 – Wilhelm Reich published Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
1934 – Lev Vygotsky published Thought and Language (Thinking and Speech).
1934 – Ruth Winifred Howard became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in psychology.
1935 – John Ridley Stroop developed a color-word task to demonstrate the interference of attention, the Stroop effect
1935 – Helen Flanders Dunbar published Emotions and Bodily Changes: A Survey of Literature on Psychosomatic Interrelationships; in 1942 she founded the American Psychosomatic Society (American Society for Research in Psychosomatic Problems), and was the first editor of the society’s journal Psychosomatic Medicine: Experimental and Clinical Studies, founded in 1939.
1935 – Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan of Harvard University published the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
1935 – Theodore Newcomb began the Bennington College Study, which ended in 1939, documenting liberalization of women students’ political beliefs, along with the effects of proximity on acquaintance and attraction.
1936 – Kurt Lewin published Principles of Topological Psychology, containing Lewin’s Equation B = f (P, E), meaning that behavior is a function of a person in their environment.
1936 – Wilhelm Reich published The Sexual Revolution.
1936 – Kenneth Spence published an analysis of discrimination learning in terms of gradients of excitation and inhibition, showing that mathematical deductions from a quantitative theory could generate interesting and empirically testable predictions.
1936 – The Psychometric Society was founded by Louis Leon Thurstone, who proposed dividing general intelligence into seven primary mental abilities (PMAs).
1938 – B.F. Skinner published his first major work The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, introducing behavior analysis.
1939 – Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley published a classic report in the journal Nature of the first recording of an action potential.
1939 – Neal E. Miller et al. published the frustration-aggression theory, which claims that aggression is the result of frustration of efforts to attain a goal.
1939 – David Wechsler developed the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale.
1939 – On 1 September World War II began with the German invasion of Poland; on 20 September Adolf Hitler signed the Euthanasia Decree, written by psychologist Max de Crinis, resulting in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program; on 23 September Sigmund Freud committed physician-assisted suicide in London on the Jewish Day of Atonement; on 31 October his archrival Otto Rank died of a kidney infection in New York City after uttering the word “comical”; Wilhelm Reich fled to New York, coining the word orgone and building “orgone accumulators”, which got him in trouble with the psychiatric establishment and the federal government.

1940s

1940 – Edwin Boring discussed the moon illusion.
1941 – Erich Fromm published Escape from Freedom, founding political psychology.
1941 – B.F. Skinner and William Kaye Estes introduced the conditioned emotional response (CER)/conditioned fear response (CFR) paradigm via electric shocks given to rats.
1942 – Ludwig Binswanger founded existential therapy.
1942 – Carl Rogers published Counseling and Psychotherapy, suggesting that respect and a nonjudgmental approach to therapy is the foundation for effective treatment of mental health issues.
1943 – J. P. Guilford developed the Stanine (Standard Nine) test for the U.S. Air Force to evaluate pilots.
1943 – Clark L. Hull published Principles of Behavior, establishing animal-based learning and conditioning as the dominant learning theory.
1943 – Leo Kanner published Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, the first systematic description of autistic children.
1943 – Abraham Maslow published the paper A Theory of Human Motivation, describing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
1944 – Zach Andrew and Cameron Peter published Myer’s Psychology Second Edition where they revolutionized the approach of learned Psychology
1945 – The Journal of Clinical Psychology was founded.
1946 – Kurt Lewin founded action research.
1946 – Stanley Smith Stevens published his levels of measurement theory.
1947 – Jerome Bruner published Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception, founding New Look Psychology, which challenges psychologists to study not just an organism’s response to a stimulus but also its internal interpretation.
1947 – Kurt Lewin coined the term “group dynamics“.
1947 Nikolai Bernstein summarized his research on the measurement of actions using his original devices that became a beginning of a new discipline of kinesiology.
1948 – Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
1949 – The Boulder Conference outlined the scientist-practitioner model of clinical psychology.
1949 – Donald Hebb published The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, in which he provided a detailed, testable theory of how the brain could support cognitive processes, revolutionizing neuropsychology and making McGill University a center of research.
1949 – David Wechsler published the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC).

1950s

1950 – Karen Horney summarized her ideas in her magnum opus Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization.
1950 – Erik Erikson published Childhood and Society, in which he introduced his theory on the stages of psycho-social development and the concept of an identity crisis.
1950 – Rollo May published The Meaning of Anxiety.
1951 – Solomon Asch published the Asch conformity experiments, demonstrating the power of conformity in groups.
1951 – Morton Deutsch published Interracial Housing: A Psychological Evaluation of a Social Experiment, producing scientific evidence of the bad effects of segregated housing, helping to end it in the U.S.
1951 – Carl Rogers published his magnum opus Client-Centered Therapy.
1951 – Lee Cronbach published his measure of reliability, now known as Cronbach’s alpha.
1952 – The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), marking the beginning of modern mental illness classification; it was revised in 1968, 1980–7, 1994, 2000 and 2013.
1952 – Hans Eysenck started a debate on psychotherapy with his critical review, claiming that psychotherapy had no documented effect, and psychoanalysis had negative effects.
1953 – Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
1953 – Nathaniel Kleitman of the U. of Chicago discovered rapid eye movement sleep (REM), founding modern sleep research.
1953 – David McClelland proposed need theory.
1953 – B.F. Skinner outlined behavioral therapy, lending support for behavioral psychology via research in the literature.
1953 – The Code of Ethics for Psychologists was developed by the American Psychological Association (APA).
1953 – Harry Stack Sullivan published The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, which holds that an individual’s personality is formed by relationships.
1954 – Abraham Maslow helped to found humanistic psychology, later developing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
1954 – Paul E. Meehl published a paper claiming that mechanical (formal algorithmic) methods of data combination outperform clinical (subjective informal) methods when used to arrive at a prediction of behavior.
1954 – James Olds and Peter Milner of McGill University discovered the brain reward system, involving the brain’s pleasure center.
1954 – Julian Rotter published Social Learning and Clinical Psychology, founding social learning theory.
1954 – Herman Witkin published Personality Through Perception, which claims that personality can be revealed through differences in how people perceive their environment; he went on to develop the Rod and Frame Test (RFT).
1954 – Bronisław Malinowski publishes Magic, Science and Religion on magical thinking and the psychology of religion. Earlier, he studied sets of rituals he referred to as magic, and distinguished these from purely religious rituals, with the latter’s purpose being the coping with one’s fundamental human crisis of apparent finiteness/mortality.
1955 – Lee Cronbach published Construct Validity in Psychological Tests, popularizing the concept of construct validity.
1955 – J. P. Guilford developed the Structure of Intellect (SOI) theory, which divides human intelligence into 150 abilities along three dimensions, operations, content, and products; it is discredited by the 1990s.
1955 – George Kelly founded personal construct psychology.
1956 – George Armitage Miller published the paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, in which he showed that there is a limit on the amount of information that can be memorized at one time.
1956 – Rollo May published Existence, promoting existential psychology.
1957 – Leon Festinger published his theory of cognitive dissonance.
1957 – Stanley Smith Stevens published Stevens’ power law.
1957 – Eric Berne developed Transactional analysis (TA), in which psychiatry patients can be treated for emotional distresses by analyzing and altering their social transactions.
1958 – John Cohen published Humanistic Psychology, the first book on the subject.
1958 – Harry Harlow gave the speech The Nature of Love, summarizing his isolation studies on infant monkeys and rejecting behavioristic and psychoanalytic theories of attachment.
1958 – Joseph Wolpe published his theory of reciprocal inhibition, leading to his theory of systematic desensitization for anxieties and phobias.
1959 – Viktor Frankl published the first English edition of Man’s Search for Meaning [with a preface by Gordon Allport], which provided an existential account of his Holocaust experience and an overview of his system of existential analysis called Logotherapy.
1959 – Noam Chomsky published his review of B.F. Skinner‘s Verbal Behavior, an event seen as by many as the start of the cognitive revolution.
1959 – George Mandler and William Kessen published The Language of Psychology.
1959 – Lawrence Kohlberg wrote his doctoral dissertation, outlining Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

1960s

1960 – John L. Fuller and W. Robert Thompson published the seminal text Behavior Genetics.
1960 – Thomas Szasz inaugurated the anti-psychiatry movement with the publication of his book, The Myth of Mental Illness.
1961 – Albert Bandura published the Bobo doll experiment, a study of behavioral patterns of aggression.
1961 – Neal E. Miller proposed the use of biofeedback to control involuntary functions.
1962 – Wilfred Bion presented his unconventional theory of thinking.
1962 – Albert Ellis published Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, describing the theoretical foundations of his therapeutic system known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
1962 – George Armitage Miller published Psychology, the Science of Mental Life, rejecting the idea that psychology should study only behavior.
1962 – Abraham Maslow published Toward a Psychology of Being, presenting his ideas of self-actualization and the hierarchy of human needs.
1962 – Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer proposed the two-factor theory of emotion, which considers emotion to be a function of both cognitive factors and physiological arousal; “People search the immediate environment for emotionally relevant cues to label and interpret unexplained physiological arousal.”
1962 – Silvan Tomkins published volume one (of two) of Affect Imagery Consciousness, presenting his affect theory
1963 – Stanley Milgram published his study of obedience to authority, now known as the Milgram experiment.
1964 – Jean M. Mandler and George Mandler published Thinking: From Association to Gestalt.
1964 – Virginia Satir published Conjoint Family Therapy, the first of several books on family therapy, causing her to become known as the “Mother of Family Therapy”
1965 – Anna Freud published Normality and Pathology in Childhood: Assessments of Development, presenting the concept of developmental lines.
1965 – William Glasser published Reality Therapy, describing his psycho-therapeutic model and introducing his concept of control theory [later renamed to Choice Theory].
1965 – Donald Winnicott published The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment, which became a main text in clinical psychodynamic developmental psychology.
1966 – Nancy Bayley became the first woman to receive the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for her contribution in developmental psychology.
1966 – Konrad Lorenz published On Aggression, which discusses his hydraulic model of instinctive pressures.
1966 – Masters and Johnson published Human Sexual Response.
1966 – Julian Rotter published a paper proposing the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (I-E Scale).
1967 – Aaron Beck published a psychological model of clinical depression, suggesting that thoughts play a significant role in the development and maintenance of depression.
1967 – Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris published a paper defining fundamental attribution error, underestimating the effect of the situation in explaining social behavior.
1967 – Ulric Neisser founded cognitive psychology.
1968 – George Cotzias developed the L-Dopa treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
1968 – Mary Main published her hypothesis of a fourth attachment style in children, the insecure disorganized attachment style.
1968 – Walter Mischel published the paper “Personality and Assessment”, criticizing Gordon Allport‘s works on trait assessment with the observation that a patient’s behavior is not consistent across diverse situations but dependent on situational cues.
1968 – DSM-II was published by the American Psychiatric Association.
1968 – The first Doctor of Psychology (Psy. D.) professional degree program in Clinical Psychology was established in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
1969 – The California School of Professional Psychology was established as the first freestanding school of professional psychology.
1969 – The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology was founded by Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and Anthony Sutich.
1969 – John Bowlby published his attachment theory in the classic book Attachment and Loss (vol. 1 of 3).
1969 – Harry Harlow published his experiment on affection development in rhesus monkeys.
1969 – Joseph Wolpe published the Subjective Units of Distress (Disturbance) Scale (SUDS).
1969 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, presenting the Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the five stages of grief.
1969 – The Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) was founded, with Joann Evansgardner as the first (temporary) president.

1970s

1970 – At an APA Town Hall Meeting, with the support of the Association for Women in Psychology, Phyllis Chesler and Nancy Henley prepared a statement on APA’s obligations to women and demanded one million dollars in reparation for the damage psychology had perpetrated against women’s minds and bodies.
1970 – APA Division 29 gives its first Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy to Eugene Gendlin.
1970 – “Critical psychology” became a psychological theoretical field. Klaus Holzkamp, who worked as a professor at the Free University of Berlin, took a central role in defining critical psychology based on the works of Karl Marx and Aleksei N. Leontiev.
1970 – Masters and Johnson published Human Sexual Inadequacy.
1971 – The Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo et al. at Stanford University, studied the human response to captivity; the experiment quickly got out of hand and was ended early.
1971 – Martin Shubik performed the dollar auction, illustrating irrational choices.
1971 – In Nov. John O’Keefe and Jonathan O. Dostrovsky announced their discovery of place cells in the hippocampus.
1971 – The Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information at the University of Trier was founded to publish the PSYNDEX database of references to psychology in the German-speaking world.
1972 – The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study commenced, a longitudinal study began, with 96% retention rate as of 2006, unprecedented for a longitudinal study, comparing to 20–40% dropout rates for other studies.
1972 – Robert E. Ornstein published The Psychology of Consciousness, about the use of biofeedback et al. to shift mood and awareness.
1972 – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari published Anti-Oedipus, the first of two-volume work Capitalism and Schizophrenia, criticizing traditional psychoanalysis and its concepts to purpose a new set of theories which they called schizoanalysis.
1972 – Endel Tulving first made the distinction between episodic and semantic memory.
1973 – Ernest Becker published The Denial of Death, siding with Otto Rank against Sigmund Freud, claiming that knowledge of one’s mortality not sexuality is the basis of character.
1973 – Morton Deutsch published The Resolution of Conflict.
1973 – Vygotsky Circle neuropsychologist Alexander Luria published The Working Brain, a detailed description with great emphasis on rehabilitation of damage.
1973 – The Vail Conference of Graduate Educators in Psychology endorsed the scholar-practitioner training model, and approved the Doctor of Psychology (Psy. D) degree.
1973 – Division 35, later the Society for the Psychology of Women of the APA, was formed, with Elizabeth Douvan as the first president.
1973 – The Committee on Women in Psychology of the APA was formed, with Martha Mednick as its first chair.
1973 – The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
1973 – The Caucus of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Members of the American Psychiatric Association was officially founded to advocate to the APA on LGBT mental health issues; in 1985 it changed its name to the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.
1973 – Nancy Friday published My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies
1973 – Timothy Leary published Neurologic, describing the eight-circuit model of consciousness.
1974 – Sandra Bem created the Bem Sex-Role Inventory.
1974 – Robert Hinde published Biological Bases of Human Social Behavior, a main text in etological-oriented developmental psychology.
1974 – Arnold Sameroff published Reproductive Risk and the Continuum of Caretaking Causality, introducing the transactional model of psychology, which became influential.
1974 – Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch of the Univ. of York proposed Baddeley’s model of working memory.
1974 – Elizabeth Loftus began publishing papers on the malleability of human memory, the misinformation effect, and false memory syndrome and its relation to recovered memory therapy.
1974 – The APA Task Force on Sex Bias and Sex-Role Stereotyping in Psychotherapeutic Practice was appointed.
1975 – Georgia Babladelis became the first editor of the Psychology of Women Quarterly.
1975 – George Mandler published Mind and Emotion.
1975 – Mary Wright became the first chair of the new Task Force on the Status of Women in Canadian Psychology.
1975 – Robert Zajonc published the confluence model, showing how birth order and family size affect IQ.
1975 – The first APA-sponsored Psychology of Women Conference was held.
1975 – The journal Sex Roles was founded.
1975 – The first review article on the psychology of women appeared in the women’s studies journal Signs, by Mary Parlee.
1975 – The first article on the psychology of women was published in the Annual Review of Psychology.
1975 – The council of representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
1976 – Stanislav Grof founded the International Transpersonal Association to promote his transpersonal psychology.
1976 – Julian Jaynes published The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which coins the term bicameral mind for the brain of humans who lived before about 1,000 B.C.E., whose right side “speaks” in the name of a chieftain or god, and whose left side “listens” and takes orders.
1976 – Michael Posner published Chronometric Explorations of Mind, using the subtractive method of Franciscus Donders to study attention and memory.
1976 – The Psychology of Women Quarterly was founded.
1977 – Ernest Hilgard proposed the divided consciousness theory of hypnosis.
1977 – Albert Bandura published the book Social Learning Theory and an article on the concept of self-efficacy, A Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change.
1977 – Susan Folstein and Michael Rutter published a study of 21 British twins in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry that reveals a high genetic component in autism.
1977 – Robert Plomin et al. proposed three major ways in which genes and environments act together to shape human behavior, coining the terms passive, active, and evocative gene–environment correlation.
1977 – Andrey Lichko published Psychopathies and Accentuations of Character of Teenagers.
1978 – Child psychologist Mary Ainsworth published her book Patterns of Attachment about her work on attachment theory and the Strange Situation Experiment (Protocol).
1978 – Paul Ekman published the Facial Action Coding System.
1978 – David Premack published the book Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?, about his research on mental abilities of monkeys, introducing the term theory of mind.
1978 – The term cognitive neuroscience was coined by Michael Gazzaniga and George Armitage Miller for the effort to understand how the brain represents mental events.
1978 – John O’Keefe and Lynn Nadel published The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map.
1978 – E.O. Wilson published On Human Nature, considered the first landmark text to deal with what would become evolutionary psychology.
1978 – The first Canadian Institute on Women and Psychology pre-convention conference was hosted at the Canadian Psychological Association by IGWAP (Interest Group on Women and Psychology).
1978 – The Caucus of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Members of the American Psychiatric Association, (now known as the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists) successfully petitioned the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to create a task force on lesbian and gay issues; it was elevated to a full standing committee in the APA in 1988.
1979 – Alice Miller published The Drama of the Gifted Child, the first of a series of books criticizing Freud and Jung for blaming the child for the sexual abuse of the parents, which she calls the “poisonous pedagogies”.
1979 – Urie Bronfenbrenner published The Ecology of Human Development, founding ecological systems theory.

1980s

1980 – Transgender people were officially classified by the American Psychiatric Association as having “gender identity disorder.”
1980 – DSM-III was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
1980 – George Mandler published Recognizing: The Judgment of Previous Occurrence, claiming a dual process basis of recognition, prior occurrence and identification.
1980 – Robert Zajonc published the paper “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences”, arguing that affective and cognitive systems are largely independent, and that affect is more powerful and important, reviving the study of emotion and affective processes.
1981 – Alan P. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith’s Sexual Preference is published. The work later becomes one of the most frequently cited retrospective studies relating to sexual orientation.
1982 – Carol Gilligan published In a Different Voice, a work on feminist psychology.
1982 – The Caucus of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) was recognized as a representative in the APA assembly, speaking directly on matters of special concern to lesbian and gay members.
1983 – Howard Gardner published Frames of Mind, introducing his theory of multiple intelligences.
1983 – The Caucus of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) successfully petitioned the APA to create a task force on psychiatric aspects of AIDS, which ultimately led to the 1984 publication of two important APA volumes Innovations in Psychotherapy with Homosexuals and Psychiatric Implications of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
1983 – W. David Pierce et al. published a paper about activity-based anorexia.
1984 – Jerome Kagan published The Nature of the Child, a biological and socially oriented description of the role of temperament in human development.
1984 – Peter Saville published the OPQ Pentagon questionnaire, a psychological personality inventory measuring the five factor model.
1984 – Florence Denmark, Carolyn R. Payton, and Laurie Eyde received the first American Psychological Association (APA) Committee on Women in Psychology Leadership Awards.
1985 – Daniel Stern published The Interpersonal World of the Infant, proposing an extensive mental life in early infancy.
1985 – Robert Sternberg proposed his triarchic theory of intelligence
1985 – Reuben Baron and David A. Kenny published the article The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology proposing a distinction of moderating in mediating variables in psychological research.
1985 – Simon Baron-Cohen published Does the Autistic Child Have a ‘Theory of Mind’? with Uta Frith and Alan Leslie, proposing that children with autism show social and communication difficulties as a result of a delay in the development of a theory of mind.
1985 – Costa & McRae published the NEO PI_R Five-Factor Personality Inventory, a 240-question measure of the five factor model
1986 – Albert Bandura published Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.
1986 – David Rumelhart and James McClelland published Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition.
1987 – Erik Erikson published The Life Cycle Completed, expanding on Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.
1987 – Roger Shepard published the universal law of generalization for psychological science.
1987 – The diagnostic category of “ego-dystonic homosexuality” was removed from the American Psychiatric Association‘s DSM with the publication of the DSM-III-R, though it still potentially remains in the DSM-IV under the category of “sexual disorder not otherwise specified” including “persistent and marked distress about one’s sexual orientation”.
1988 – Michael M. Merzenich et al. showed that sensory and motor maps in the cortex can be modified with experience, a process called neural plasticity.
1988 – Claude Steele proposed the theory of self-affirmation.
1989 – Psychophysiologist Vladimir Rusalov published first activity-specific model of temperament

1990s

1990 – On 17 May the World Health Organization (WHO) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder, launching the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
1990 – Leonard Berkowitz published the cognitive neoassociation model of aggressive behavior to cover the cases missed by the frustration-aggression hypothesis.
1991 – Steven Pinker proposed his theory on how children acquire language in Science, later popularized in the book The Language Instinct.
1991 – The first issue of Feminism & Psychology was published.
1991- The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) passed a resolution opposing “public or private discrimination” against homosexuals. It stopped short, however, of agreeing to open its training institutes to these individuals.
1992 – The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) extended the provisions of its 1991 resolution (see above) to training candidates at its affiliated institutes.
1992 – Jaak Panksepp coined the term affective neuroscience for the name of the field that studies neural mechanisms of emotion, and in 1998 published the book Affective Neuroscience – The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions
1992 – Sandra Scarr published Developmental Theories of the 1990s, proposing that genes control experiences, and search and create environments.
1992 – Joseph LeDoux summarized and published his research on brain mechanisms of emotion and emotional learning.
1992 – The American Psychological Association (APA) selected behavioral genetics as one of two themes that best represented the past, present, and future of psychology.
1994 – DSM-IV was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
1994 – Antonio Damasio published Descartes’ Error, presenting the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior, particularly decision-making.
1994 – Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve.
1994 – Michael Posner and Marcus Raichle published Images of the Mind, using positron emission tomography (PET) to localize brain cognitive functions.
1994 – Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith published A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action, a book on the use of developmental models based on dynamic systems.
1994 – A study reports that magical thinking emerges more frequently under high-stress (e.g. immediate death anxiety) conditions.
1994 – Harvard University professor of psychiatry John E. Mack interviews dozens of experiencers of the 1994 Ariel School UFO incident, reporting the event to the world, which indicated that the event cannot be dismissed as mass hysteria, after going on television with alien abductees during the spring of 1994
1995 – Simon Baron-Cohen coined the term mental blindness to reflect the inability of children with autism to properly represent the mental states of others.
1996 – Giacomo Rizzolatti published his discovery of mirror neurons.
1996 – Amos Tversky defined ambiguity aversion, the idea that people do not like ambiguous choices, relating it to comparative ignorance.
1997 – The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) became the first U.S. national mental health organization to support same-sex marriage.
1998 – Martin Seligman established Positive Psychology as his main theme when he became President of the American Psychological Association (APA).
1999 – George Botterill published The Philosophy of Psychology, about how modern cognitive science challenges our common sense self-image.

21st century

2000s

2000 – Alan Baddeley updated his model of working memory from 1974 to include the episodic buffer as a third slave system alongside the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad
2000 – Max Velmans published Understanding Consciousness, arguing for reflexive monism.
2002 – Avshalom Caspi et al. presented a study that was the first to provide epidemiological evidence that a specific genotype moderates children’s sensitivity to environmental insults.
2002 – Steven Pinker published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences.
2002 – Daniel Kahneman won Nobel Prize
2007 – George Mandler published A History of Modern Experimental Psychology

2010s

2010s – As research on the topic accumulates and its usage increases, scientists investigate neuroenhancement – such as nootropics – regarding psychological mechanisms underlying cognitive functions, neuroethics, effects on moral decision-making, public perception, their potential for the treatment of mental diseases, and the potential or ongoing use by professionals or self-administering civilians.
2010s – With the rise of smartphone gaming and a continued large and nearly entirely commercially-driven gaming industry and Big Tech, mobile apps and social media are made intentionally addictive using insights from psychology. Research works such as The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business propose that the methods of “limbic capitalism” have become substantially more sophisticated. (see also below)
2010s – With increasing legalization of cannabis within the U.S. and worldwide, chronic effects of various types of cannabis consumption on cognition, along with comparisons of legalization impacts, become a more common focus of psychological research.
2010s – As digital content becomes more abundant and more immediately available, attention gains a higher value, with the attention economy, where attention is the capital alongside data on consumers, taking shape as part of “mental capitalism“.
2010s – Neuroscience and genetics investigate neurological and heritable factors of intelligence and develop neuroimaging intelligence testing, powered by far more extensive data and sophisticated tools.
2010 – The draft of DSM-5 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) was distributed for comment and critique.
2010 – Simon LeVay published Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, which in 2012 received the Bullough Book Award for the most distinguished book written for the professional sexological community published in a given year.
2012 – In 2009 America’s professional association of endocrinologists established best practices for transgender children that included prescribing puberty-suppressing drugs to preteens followed by hormone therapy beginning at about age 16, and in 2012 the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry echoed these recommendations.
2012 – The American Psychiatric Association issued official position statements supporting the care and civil rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals.
2013 – On 2 April U.S. President Barack Obama announced the 10-year BRAIN Initiative to map the activity of every neuron in the human brain.
2013 – DSM-5 was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Among other things, it eliminated the term “gender identity disorder”, which was considered stigmatizing, instead referring to “gender dysphoria“, which focuses attention only on those who feel distressed by their gender identity.
2014 – Stanislas Dehaene, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Trevor Robbins, were awarded the Brain Prize for their research on higher brain mechanisms underpinning literacy, numeracy, motivated behaviour, social cognition, and their disorders.
2014 – Brenda Milner, Marcus Raichle, and John O’Keefe received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition
2014 – John O’Keefe shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for their discoveries of cells (Place cell, Grid cell) that constitute a positioning system in the brain.
2015 – The journal Psychology Today announced that it will no longer accept ads for gay conversion therapy, and is deleting medical practitioners who list such therapy in their professional profiles.
7 August 2015 – The American Psychological Association barred psychologists from participating in national security interrogations at sites violating international law.
27 August 2015 – The Reproducibility Project, a crowdsourced collaboration of 270 contributing authors led by Brian Nosek to repeat 100 published experimental and correlational psychological studies, shows the replication crisis in psychology research, a term coined in the early 2010s when awareness of the problem was growing. According to the study published in Science, only 39 of 100 studies published in major psychology journals could be replicated.
2016 – Intensive use of psychological profiling and psychographic microtargeting, as well as voter manipulation – such as Internet manipulation, using insights from psychology and psychological data becomes a worldwide prevalent phenomenon in politics of majoritarian plain-votes-based democracies. Social media has given rise to new public opinion cues that often have weak links with real public opinion, part of social media-driven societal and ideological polarisation via “filter bubbles“,which becomes an increasingly common topic of psychological research along with conspirational thinking/mentality and misinformation-proliferation.
13 June 2019 – A study concludes that “spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature [e.g. via one long or many shorter visits/week] is associated with good health and wellbeing”.
June 2019 — The World Health Organization included gaming disorder, characterized by problematic or compulsive use of video games, in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
November 2019 – Researchers report, based on an international study of 27 countries, that caring for families is the main motivator for people worldwide.

2020s

2020s – Researchers investigate the impacts of different forms (types or categories) of digital media uses on cognition and the impacts of digital media use(s) on different types of biological cognitive abilities. Further information: Digital media use and mental health § Impact on cognition
2020s – The pandemic COVID-19 and its mitigation have a substantiall toll on mental health worldwide.Further information: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on neurological, psychological and other mental health outcomes
With growing awareness and impacts of climate change and other environmental issues, ecopsychology increasingly gathers public attention and becomes a more common topic of research
- Studies investigate the psychological benefits of urban green spaces (UGS) in detail, with one 2021 study reporting that higher exposure to woodland urban green spaces or urban forest but not grassland is associated with improved cognitive development and risks of mental problems for urban adolescents.
- August 2020 – A review concludes that “Within a generation, children’s lives have largely moved indoors” and that “research indicates that direct experiences of nature in childhood contribute to care for nature across the life span.”
- March 2021 – A study concludes that “eco-anger”, termed in the style of the recently coined “eco-anxiety” which is reported to be rising, “predicted better mental health outcomes, as well as greater engagement in pro-climate activism and personal behaviours“. Anger may be “powerful in motivating people to get involved” and to overcome degrees of apathy. Further information: Psychological impact of climate change
- 2020s – Research investigates how well-being could objectively or effectively be measured for health and ecological economics.
2020s – Accumulating and substantially more sophisticated research, often using large biological datasets, investigate the links of probiotics and mental health (psychobiotics) and potential interventions, the links of nutrition and mental health (nutrition psychology) and potential recommendations or interventions, and neurobiological effects of physical exercise that affect mental health. Moreover, research increasingly begins to investigate potential interventions or modifyable factors in brain aging.
2020s – Research investigates challenges of manipulative choice architectures, false and misleading information and distracting environments and respective potential interventions.Further information: Internet manipulation and Misinformation § Online misinformation
2020s – In the new field of neuromarketing, consumers are manipulated with insights from neuroscience and psychology to lead consumer decision making and behavior.

2020

June – Scientists reporting the discovery of Aguada Fénix put forward a theory of cognitive archaeology whereby communal work of such large projects was important in the initial development of the Maya civilization.
November – The first whole-genome comparison between chimpanzees and bonobos is published and shows genomic aspects that may underlie or have resulted from their divergence and behavioral differences, including selection for genes related to diet and hormones.

2021

July – A study reports that adolescent loneliness in contemporary schools and depression increased substantially and consistently worldwide after 2012.
September – Psychologist and behavior geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden publishes The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, an argument for using genetics to create a just society – including in terms of psychology-related predispositions, similar to a bioethical argument made by Papaioannou in 2013.
October – The American Psychological Association releases guidelines for the optimal use of social media in professional psychological practice.
December – In applied behavioural science, “megastudies” as meta-analyses are proposed and demonstrated for investigating the efficacy of many different interventions designed in an interdisciplinary manner by separate teams, e.g. to inform policy.

2022

July – A deep learning system that learns intuitive fundamental physics from visual data (of virtual 3D environments) that is based on the violation-of-expectation theory of visual cognition in infants is reported.
November – A study reports estimated contemporary prevalence and psychological associations with belief in witchcraft around the world, which (in their data) varied between 9% and 90% between nations and is still a widespread element in worldviews globally. It for example shows associations with low “innovative activity”, “weak institutions”, lower life expectancy, lower life satisfaction and high religiosity.
November – A study delivers a potential explanation-component for why learning is often more efficient in children beyond the higher level of neuroplasticity.

2023

February – A study hypothesizes mental health awareness efforts (in current forms) or increasingly glamorised and romanticised mental disorders on social media (e.g. quotes about depression on aesthetically appealing backgrounds shared more widely on certain social media – especially TikTok) may contribute to the recent substantial rise in reported mental health problems by intensifying and over-diagnosing of such. Around 2023, the rapid rise of TikTok prompts extensive research into potential harmful effects of such apps such as higher levels of mental problems correlating with higher levels of usage or addictive elements of this and similar apps.
March – Bioengineers show bodily system changes can induce anxiety, in specific altered heart rate by itself in risky contexts, after earlier studies also implicated immune system elements.
April – The first review of interventions against false conspiracy beliefs is published, indicating interventions “that fostered an analytical mindset or taught critical thinking skills” are most effective and that preventive action is important.
June – A time-use study provides the first comprehensive bird’s-eye view, with a “global human day” framework, of what humans currently spend their time on.

East

1872–1950 – Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Psychology
Sri Aurobindo formulates an “integral” psychology that treats consciousness as fundamental, introduces the “psychic being” as evolving soul, and outlines a multi‑tiered model of mind (from physical mind up to supramental) with practices for their transformation.
1905 – First psychology lab in India
Sir Brojendra Nath Seal establishes what is widely regarded as India’s first psychology laboratory at Calcutta University, initiating institutional Western‑style psychological research in India.
1916 – First Department of Psychology in India
N. N. Sengupta founds the first Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Calcutta, explicitly connecting laboratory methods with India’s long introspective traditions.
Mid‑20th century – Indian and Buddhist thought enter global psychology
As humanistic and transpersonal psychologies emerge (c. 1960s), Indian concepts of self‑realization, samādhi, nirvāṇa, and Buddhist meditation are integrated into Western theories of self‑actualization and peak experiences.
1926–2022 – Thich Nhat Hanh and engaged mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh develops a modern, socially engaged Buddhist psychology, articulating the Five and Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings and presenting mindfulness as a whole‑life practice beyond symptom relief.

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Category Archives: Psychology

Psychology (1-1000 CE): Comparative Analysis

Divergent Paths and Shared Insights

Epistemological Frameworks

Therapeutic Modalities

The Role of Spirituality and Religion

Institutional Developments

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Islamic Revolution

The Birth of Psychiatric Medicine (9th-11th Centuries CE)

The Founding of Psychiatric Institutions

Comprehensive Biopsychosocial Systems

The Synthesis of Avicenna

Institutional Care and Cultural Context

Notes:

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Eastern Trajectory

Holistic Systems and Cognitive Therapies

Indian Medical Psychology (1st Century Onward):
The Ayurvedic Framework

Buddhist Psychology (1st-5th Centuries):
Cognitive Approaches to Mental Suffering

Chinese Medical Psychology (1st-10th Centuries):
The Integration of Emotion and Physiology

Notes:

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Western Trajectory

From Greco-Roman Naturalism to Christian Supernaturalism

Early Imperial Rome (1st-2nd Centuries):
Medical Systematization

The Christian Transformation (3rd-5th Centuries):
The Return of Supernatural Explanations

Monastic Psychology (4th-5th Centuries):
The Desert Fathers and Acedia

Byzantine Medical Continuity (4th-7th Centuries):
Preserving and Advancing Greco-Roman Knowledge

Psychology Timeline (Modern Period)

West

21st century

East

Pages

Categories

Posts by Month

Recent Comments

Top Posts & Pages

Administration

Vinaire's Blog

Category Archives: Psychology

Psychology (1-1000 CE): Comparative Analysis

Divergent Paths and Shared Insights

Epistemological Frameworks

Therapeutic Modalities

The Role of Spirituality and Religion

Institutional Developments

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Islamic Revolution

The Birth of Psychiatric Medicine (9th-11th Centuries CE)

The Founding of Psychiatric Institutions

Comprehensive Biopsychosocial Systems

The Synthesis of Avicenna

Institutional Care and Cultural Context

Notes:

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Eastern Trajectory

Holistic Systems and Cognitive Therapies

Indian Medical Psychology (1st Century Onward): The Ayurvedic Framework

Buddhist Psychology (1st-5th Centuries): Cognitive Approaches to Mental Suffering

Chinese Medical Psychology (1st-10th Centuries): The Integration of Emotion and Physiology

Notes:

Psychology (1-1000 CE): The Western Trajectory

From Greco-Roman Naturalism to Christian Supernaturalism

Early Imperial Rome (1st-2nd Centuries): Medical Systematization

The Christian Transformation (3rd-5th Centuries): The Return of Supernatural Explanations

Monastic Psychology (4th-5th Centuries): The Desert Fathers and Acedia

Byzantine Medical Continuity (4th-7th Centuries): Preserving and Advancing Greco-Roman Knowledge

Psychology Timeline (Modern Period)

West

21st century

East

Pages

Categories

Posts by Month

Recent Comments

Top Posts & Pages

Administration

Indian Medical Psychology (1st Century Onward):
The Ayurvedic Framework

Buddhist Psychology (1st-5th Centuries):
Cognitive Approaches to Mental Suffering

Chinese Medical Psychology (1st-10th Centuries):
The Integration of Emotion and Physiology

Early Imperial Rome (1st-2nd Centuries):
Medical Systematization

The Christian Transformation (3rd-5th Centuries):
The Return of Supernatural Explanations

Monastic Psychology (4th-5th Centuries):
The Desert Fathers and Acedia

Byzantine Medical Continuity (4th-7th Centuries):
Preserving and Advancing Greco-Roman Knowledge