Psychological approaches

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.