When psychology was born at the end of the 19th century, there had already been talk about something called the mind for a long time. In fact, in many aspects the psychological theories and methodologies used by the first psychologists are based precisely in what at that historical moment was understood by “psyche”
In a certain way, psychology relied on positions that are not so much scientific as philosophical, and that They had a lot to do with a doctrine known as dualism
What is dualism?
Dualism is a philosophical current according to which there is a fundamental division between the body and the mind In this way, while the body is material, the mind is described as an incorporeal entity, whose nature is independent of the body and which therefore does not depend on it to exist.
Dualism creates a framework that is widely used by various religions, because it opens the possibility of the existence of a spiritual life outside the body. However, this doctrine is not simply religious, and has had a very important influence on psychology, as we will see.
Variants of dualism
The ideas and beliefs based on dualism are not always easy to detect and sometimes they can be very subtle. In fact, it is very common for people who initially claim not to believe in the existence of a spiritual dimension to speak of the mind as if it were independent of the body. It is not surprising, because the idea that our consciousness is one thing and everything we can see and feel through the senses (including our body) is another is very intuitive.
That is why It is possible to distinguish between different types of dualism Although they are all based on the idea that the body and mind are independent realities, the way in which they are expressed differs. These are the main and most influential in the West.
Platonic dualism
One of the most developed and ancient forms of dualism is that of the Greek philosopher Plato, closely related to his theory of the world of ideas. this thinker I believed that the body is the prison of the soul which in its passage through mortal life is limited and aspires to return to the immaterial place from which it came through the search for knowledge and truth.
Subsequently, The philosopher Avicenna continued to develop a similar dualism to that of Plato, and identified the soul as the “I.”
Cartesian dualism
That of the French philosopher René Descartes is the type of dualism that has most directly influenced psychology and neuroscience. Descartes believed that the soul communicated with the body through the pineal gland, and that the latter is virtually indistinguishable from a machine In fact, for this thinker an organism could be compared to the irrigation system: the brain made a substance travel through the nerves to contract the muscles.
Dualism in neuroscience
Although modern science discards the concept of the soul to explain how the nervous system works, there are still arguments that can be considered transformations of dualism. For example, the idea that consciousness or decision-making belongs to a specific entity located in a specific area of the brain It is very reminiscent of the “ghost in the machine” myth that is, a kind of autonomous entity that lives cloistered in the brain and uses it as a set of buttons and machines that it can control.
The problems of dualism
Although dualism is a popular way of thinking when talking about the nature of the mind, in recent centuries it has lost its popularity in the scientific and philosophical field. This is so in part because it is a philosophical current that raises many more questions than it answers
If our actions and our consciousness are explained by the existence of a soul within our body… where does the consciousness and ability to perform acts of this spiritual entity come from? How can an incorporeal entity express itself only through a body and not through anything, given that being immaterial it cannot exist in time and space? How is it possible to affirm that something immaterial exists within us if the immaterial is defined by being outside our ability to study it?
His role in the birth of psychology
The 19th century was a historical cover that in Western countries was marked by the rejection of dualism and the triumph of the idea that the mind is not something independent of the body. That is, materialist monism was assumed, according to which everything related to the psyche is expressions of the functioning of an organism.
However, in the world of psychology, action was not always consistent with this idea, partly because of how easy it is to fall into dualism and partly because of inexperience, as there are no precedents in psychological research.
For example, although Sigmund Freud declared himself an atheist and despised dualism, in practice his theories were based on such a marked metaphysics that it was difficult to distinguish his ideas from that of a person who believed in souls.
Likewise, most of the early experimental psychologists They trusted the introspective method, accepting the idea that the mind is something that can be best studied “from within”, as if inside someone’s head there existed someone capable of looking up and describing what they see in a neutral way (given that the phenomena mental would be something like what happens in the machine that works independently of oneself). Besides, Other figures in the history of psychology refused to discard dualism: for example, William James and Carl Jung.
In any case, dualism remains a path of thought that we usually resort to automatically, regardless of the conclusions we have reached through reflection about the nature of the mind. It may at some point disappear completely from the research world, but outside of it it is unlikely to do so.
