Psychological approaches

![CDATA[Psychology in the current sense of the word had not yet emerged in the early modern period. The term 'psychology' itself was coined around the sixteenth century, and originally meant a 'study of the soul', rather than a study of the mind and emotions as it is understood today. Discussions about psychological phenomena were approached from a number of perspectives, including naturalist perspectives within which the natural origin of emotions and behaviours were emphasized rather than supernatural or spiritual causes; materialist perspectives based on the premise that matter forms the ultimate reality; mechanistic perspectives that focused on the operation of natural laws of science; vitalism which contended that mechanical processes could not account for the entirety of human experience; and idealism, or a belief that human experience is a mental construct rather than a material reality.]]