Abstract
ABSTRACT In this essay, I aim to reconstruct the first systematic encounter between the modern discipline of psychology and the philosophical and theological tradition of the therapy of the soul in the German Enlightenment. With a detailed investigation of Johann Christian Bolten’s Thoughts about Psychological Cures (1751) and its context, I intend to argue for the importance of the role of Baumgarten’s and Meier’s aesthetics as the connecting link between the previous tradition of medicina mentis and the psychological turn in the therapy of the soul. In more detail, I will examine the influence of aesthetics on three different aspects of the psychological cures, that is, the doctor’s visit to the patient; the treatment of the lower faculties of the soul; and therapeutic efficacy. Finally, I will elucidate the consequences of the foundation of the therapy of the soul on psychological principles for both philosophy and medicine up to the moment in which the “medicine of the soul” will start to be spelled with the Graecizing name of “psychiatry” at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Published Version
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