Psychology, as we think of it, was not a preoccupation of most people until very recently. As Malina (1981) pointed out in his discussion of the pre-Christian worldview, personality at that time was flattened out, viewed as more dyadic than layered. It was also not separate from the body. The emphasis was external, rather than internal, with a focus on shame, honor, family, clan, and hierarchy, rather than on one's own internal functioning.
However, there was a conception of psychology, although quite different from that of modern psychology. As with so many things in the intellectual lineage of the Western world, this conception is associated with the thought of Aristotle.
According to Leahey (2000), Aristotle was first and foremost a scientist, with a practical bent. He was an empiricist and observer, which included observation of human beings, as well as the rest of the natural world. It is from Aristotle that we derive our sense that there is a "natural" way of doing things and that this is important. In other words, Aristotle promoted a worldview which identified the natural world as the model for thought and human behavior and promoted the idea that the "natural" could be identified through scientific methods, including observation.
Aristotle had a complete philosophical system out of which his concept of psychology emerged. Although it might be helpful to understand some of his terminology, space is inadequate to explore those concepts fully. However, the gist of his viewpoint is that psychology is the study of the soul and the soul is the aspect of being which separates the animate world from the inanimate world. In other words, that which has soul is animate, while that which does not possess soul is inanimate. Again, there is preference expressed in this dualism, in that soul and the animate are preferred. This has helped create the modern environmental problem as well as helped shape the way we defi...