Greek and Roman Influence in Psychology Essays

The humoral view of the body and the progress it aided in medicine was greatly owed to Hippocrates and Galen. Although Galen agreed with many aspects of Hippocratic medicine, there were several more aspects that Galen practiced and believed that were different. Being that Galen used Hippocratic works as the foundation of his practice of medicine, there should be some similarities towards Hippocrates and Galen’s approaches towards humoralism. These similarities were, influences on a person’s health, preventative healthcare, and factors affecting diagnosis. Using these concepts provided by Hippocrates, Galen then builds on these with his own concepts and beliefs.

Explain the reasons for the development of psychology as an academic discipline in the 19th and 20th centuries, making explicit the important turning points and breakthroughs.

The history of psychology is in infancy at the present time. Many philosophers can be credited to the development of this science. Starting in the early 18th and 19th centuries philosophers such as Rene’ Descartes and John Locke opened the world of what we know as psychology today. The British empiricists also contributed to psychology. Some of these men include David Hume and David Hartley.

     The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations of Europe began to progress toward a more civilized order of society. As there were no previous establishment to base their ideals on, it was understandable that there were some difficulties in their progression as a society. Although the ancient Greek and Roman governments fell, both had similar paths of creation, conquest, and destruction.

The passage On the Sacred Disease, is an examination into the alleged 'sacred disease' of epilepsy. Although many of the anatomic and bodily propositions were incorrect, Hippocrates concepts were closer to the diagnostics and teachings of today than those of metaphysical reasoning. For these reasons, On the Sacred Disease provided a structural understanding of diseases in our bodies today.

The memoir Brain on Fire, written by author Susannah Cahalan, describes the journey she lived through with an undiagnosed disease. Susannah goes from being a New York Times journalist to being a person who couldn’t control herself and had to be strapped down to the hospital bed, in other words she was becoming psychotic. She did not choose to become the person she was in the hospital, someone who had no control over her body, someone who was lost. This got to a the point to where nurses no longer wanted to treat her and lost their patience because she was not being cooperative and was becoming more violent.The reason as to why she became this person was due to the misdiagnosing, doctors not taking time to do further test and family not thinking her symptoms were serious enough to have an actual disease. The signs were there but no one thought anything about it, as they thought she was over exaggerating. It wasn’t until she had her first seizure and the fact that she was hospitalized that her family, friends and even the doctors finally realized there was something wrong.

In “Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media” by Elaine Showalter, she writes that Jean-Martin Charcot, who was also known as "the founder of modern neurology", stated that hysteria was determined by hereditary determinants. By researching

In 1906 he noticed brain tissue in women changing and dying of an usual mental illness

Emil Kraeplin, a German physician was one of the first to categorize mental disorders and he used the term dementia praecox for individuals who had symptoms that we now associate with schizophrenia. Since then our understanding of this mental illness has evolved even though the causes of this illness to this day remain hard to comprehend. (Weiner, 1997)

People uneducated about Epilepsy may have confused thoughts on what it really is. People have these "notions," which are partly or entirely not true. So, throughout this research paper, these notions will be proven untrue, mostly by factual information given by

Hippocrates of Cos, a physician in ancient Greece, is considered to be the father of medicine due to his many contributions to the field in his life. Through research and different experiments he was able to conclude many different principles, including on of the most important: the four humors. By observing reactions to different illnesses, sometimes leading the patient to die, he was able to develop the theory. His theory of the four humors was that the human body was filled with four basic substances, or humors, that when in balance indicate the person is healthy. If there was too little or too much of one of the four, a disease or disability would result. The four humors of Hippocratic medicine are black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Before the humors were introduced, many people believed that the source of illness was punishment from the Gods. It wasn’t until after Hippocrates’ introduction to medicine that the field stepped away from religion and into science.

Psychology viewed as an old discipline. Psychology can trace its roots to the 5 century BC to the Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, because we grapple with the same questions they attempted to answer. On the other hand, we could view psychology as emerging when philosophy and physiology merged to include experimentation and empirical methods to answer those questions about 200 years ago. Thus, it also viewed as a new discipline in 1879, which the approach taken to study make psychology became a science and distinguish from the older discipline philosophy and form modem

History and Systems of Psychology is a course requirement offered to Psychology majors and minors. This course is used to provide majors and minors with the foundation and the evolution of the field of psychology. Within this class, many scholars of discussed. Two scholars that stood out to me in this course would be John Watson and Max Wertheimer. These two particular scholars are responsible for two of the most influential and famous schools of thought, behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. These two schools of thought are responsible for changing the field of psychology and introducing the field to new theories and ways of thinking. Although the two schools of thought are similar in being influential but they are different in many ways. The two schools of thought are even said to be contradictory of one another and one is even said to be the cause of the fading out of the other.

Aristotle, a Greek Philosopher, was born in 384 B.C.E. and was known to show an interest in living things. To find out how plants and animals organs sustained life, he collected and dissected them. He deliberately engaged on studying the reproduction of life to see how each generation and actions of living people spoke, remembered, and learned.

As The Greek empire declined, Rome inherited its medical traditions and knowledge. During the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D health standards dropped considerably and outbreaks occurred of life threatening diseases. Galen of Pergamon, a follower of Hippocrates, gathered much of the medical knowledge of the time and added to it his studies of anatomy and physiology (mostly of animals). In Spite of his errors in describing certain anatomical and physiology phenomena, his writing created the foundation for medicine over 1500 years later in Europe. Though Galen created a historical event, he indeed followed and admired one of the