Evolutionary Monism in the Study of Mental Phenomena. The Clinical-Differential Psychopathology of Enrico Morselli, Scientist and Philosopher (1852–1929)

Abstract

This paper analyses evolutionary monism as developed by Enrico Morselli, an illustrious Italian psychiatrist. This epistemological conception serves as the foundation of his programme to naturalise the human sciences and psychiatry in accordance with the well known perspective of scientific philosophy. For Morselli, “dynamic” monism, conceived in accordance with the principal of continuity between physiological and psychological phenomena, constituted a critical alternative to both technical reductionism and mechanical positivism in the late 1800s. Influenced by evolutionism as well as by neo-Kantian criticism, Morselli, who in his monistic conceptualization defines the “mental” as a set of higher cerebral functions connected to progressive levels of the increasing complexity of living beings, came to be seen as a precursor to emergent materialism. Moving ahead from these schools of thought, Morselli’s clinical-experimental studies on the psychophysiology of “personality” prefigure a differential approach that characterises the origins of psychological science in Italy.