(in Polish) Psychologia i średniowiecze SzD-DH>Psyasre

In recent years, the humanities, including history, have increasingly focused not only on human creative output but also on understanding the creator themselves—their mentality, that is, their system of values, as well as their social and individual behaviors. The discovery of the medieval human “world of senses and thought” allows for a new and more accurate interpretation of both discrete historical events and long-term historical processes within the framework of the longue durée.
The aim of the lecture is, on the one hand, to introduce medieval intellectual culture and, on the other, to provide its concrete exemplification. The main texts around which the lecture will be structured include Aristotle’s treatise De Anima, its thirteenth-century commentaries, and the most important late medieval statements and theories concerning human psychology. What characterizes medieval—and especially Thomistic—psychology is a distinctly holistic approach to the human being.
During the lecture, the following topics will be addressed:
The main “pillars” of medieval human mentality
The treatise De Anima and its commentaries in medieval culture and the educational system
Anthropology and key medieval definitions of the human being
The structure, composition, functions, and dysfunctions of the external senses: sight and hearing
The structure, composition, functions, and dysfunctions of the external senses: smell, taste, and touch
The structure, composition, functions, and dysfunctions of the internal senses: the brain
The structure, composition, functions, and dysfunctions of the internal senses: imagination
The structure, composition, functions, and dysfunctions of the internal senses: instinct, common sense, and memory
The education of imagination and mnemonic techniques
Mental illness and its medieval interpretations
The mind: intellect and processes of understanding
The mind: will and bodily desires, intellectual desires ut natura, and intellectual desires ut ratio
“Logotherapy” according to Thomas Aquinas
The problem of depression according to Thomas Aquinas
Medieval therapies in the context of the main contemporary schools of human psychology