9th Edition

A Critical History of Psychology From Antiquity to Modernity

By Thomas Hardy Leahey Copyright 2025
628 Pages 91 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

628 Pages 91 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This fully updated and refreshed 9th edition places social, economic and political forces of change alongside psychology’s internal theoretical and empirical arguments. It utilizes a critical lens to illuminate the way in which the external world has shaped the development of psychology and, in turn, how psychology from antiquity to modernity has shaped society. The text approaches the material... Read more

Part One. Situating Psychology

Chapter 1. Introduction

Part Two. Psychology Before Psychology: Discovery of the Mind

Prelude: The World We Have Lost: EEA to 1688 CE

Chapter 2. Antiquity: Locating the Mind Within

Chapter 3. Hellenism, Feudalism, and Renaissance: Tending the Soul

Part Three. A Science of the Mind

Interlude I: Modernity in Mind and the Rise of Science: 1543 to 1915

Chapter 4. The Way of Ideas: Furnishing the Mind

Chapter 5. Psychology of Consciousness: Looking Inward

Chapter 6. Psychology of Adaptation: Looking Outward

Part Four. A Science of Human Nature

Interlude II: Modernity, its Disenchantments, and Social Policy: 1-1871

Chapter 7. Social Science before Science: Approaching the Social Problem

Chapter 8. Psychology of the Unconscious: Confronting Irrationality

Chapter 9. Psychology and Social Science: Managing Modern Life

Part Five. Two Psychologies in the Modern World

Interlude III: Late Modernity: War, Peace, War, Peace, War 1914 –

Chapter 10. Behaviorism: Ostracizing Mind

Chapter 11. Cognitive Science: Return of the Prodigal

Chapter 12. Applied and Professional Psychology: Treating the Individual

Chapter 13. The Psychological Society: Coping with (Post)Modernity

Postlude: Reflections on Psychology Today

Biography

Thomas Hardy Leahey received a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the direction of William F. Brewer. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. He has been President of the Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of APA), and Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24 of the APA). He is also author of Fundamentals of Cognitive Science and co-author (with Grace Evans Leahey) of Psychology’s Occult Doubles: Psychology and the Problem of Pseudoscience. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.