The Philosophical and Scientific Roots of Psychology in Health

The history of psychology in health can be read as a long intellectual journey that begins with the reflections of Ancient Greece on the soul, the body, and virtue, when thinking about the human being also meant questioning the foundations of the good life and inner harmony.

Throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, this horizon expands, incorporating new ways of observing human beings, nature, and reason, in a movement that values experience, critique, and systematic inquiry. In the nineteenth century, with the advance of the natural sciences and the development of experimental methods, psychology began to establish itself as an autonomous field, committed to understanding the mind and behavior with greater rigor and precision.

Along this path, philosophy, biology, and medicine intertwine in fertile, sometimes tense, dialogues that produce ruptures, discoveries, and new questions about the deep ties between subjectivity and health. It is from this plural legacy that our current ways of understanding psychological suffering, guiding care, and thinking about well-being in an integrated way still derive today, in its human, relational, and historical dimensions.