Università Roma Tre

Institutional part on the general history of the sciences of the mind:
I) History of science and history of psychology 1. Why study the history of the sciences of the mind 2. Historiography of science: continuism and scientific revolutions 3. Normal science and paradigms 4. Historiography of psychology and neuroscience
II) The long philosophical past 1. The first psychological problems 2. The psychology of classical thought 3. Psychology from classical thought to Christianity 4. From the Arabs to the Renaissance 5. The change in the conception of man with Humanism and renaissance 6. Descartes 7. Rationalism and empiricism 8. From Descartes to the "idéologues" 9. The Kantian Interdiction
III) The birth of experimental psychology: from Helmholtz to Wundt 1. The birth of experimental psychology 2. Helmholtz: specific nervous energy and unconscious inference 3. The phenomenological innatism of Ewald Hering 4. Wilhelm Wundt and physiological psychology 5. Titchener and North American structuralism
IV) The reaction to Wundt in Europe and America 1. Brentano and the Brentanians 5. American functionalism, between evolutionism and pragmatism
V) The psychology of Gestalt 1. The beginnings 2. The laws of Gestalt 3. Isomorphism 4. The field model 5. Rise and diaspora
VI) The psychodynamic perspective and psychoanalysis 1. Introduction 2. From the organic conception to the psychodynamic conception of mental illness 3. Janet's theory 4. Psychoanalysis from Freud to the 50s 5. Jung's theory 6. Adler's theory 7. Themes of psychoanalysis of the late twentieth century and new themes 8. Phenomenological psychiatry 9. Personality theories 10. Integrated models between health and pathology of the mind
VII) The behaviorist perspective I. Introduction 2. American psychology at the beginning of the century: structuralism and functionalism 3. Behaviorism from Watson to the 50s 4. Skinner and the behaviorist utopia 5. Operationism in psychology 6. Personality, psychopathology and social learning in the behaviorist perspective
VIII) The cognitive perspective 1. Introduction 2. The study of cognitive processes: from the Würzburg school to Bartlett 3. The theories of intelligence 4. Theories of psychic development 5. Piaget's theory 6. Probabilistic and ecological theories of mental processes 7. Cognitivism 8. Cognitive science
IX) The historical-cultural perspective 1. Introduction 3. The historical-cultural theory of the mind from Vygotsky to the 60s 4. The theory of activity 5. Social constructionism. Cultural psychology
X) The biological and neuroscientific perspective 1. Introduction 2. Animal and comparative psychology. Ethology 3. Research on brain functions at the beginning of the twentieth century 4. Bechterev's reflexology 5. Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity 6. Holistic theories of the functioning of the mind and brain in the early twentieth century 7. The neuroconnectionism of Hebb 8. Research on brain function and behavior: 1950-70 9. The theory of brain functional systems of Lurija 10. Cognitive, affective and social neuroscience.
XI) The contemporary debate 1. Crisis of theories or crisis of psychology 2. Empirical verification in psychology 3. Psychology of common sense and alternative psychology 4. The primacy of neuroscience 5. The discomfort of psychotherapy 6. Psychology and contemporary society.

monograph part:
Mind, body and biological evolution: between adaptations and diseases
This part will outline the history of evolutionary conceptions of the mind, the mind/body relationship, and evolutionary theories on the causes and processes of mental and psychosomatic diseases

for the institutional part
Pike R. (2013). History of psychology: an introduction. Rome-Bari: Laterza (chapters: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5 paragraphs 5.1 and 5.5; 6).
Mecacci L. (2011). History of twentieth-century psychology. Rome-Bari: Laterza (chapters: 3; 4; 5; 6 paragraphs 1,3,4,5; 7; 8).