Shamanism and Psychology in Ancient Greece and India: The Evolution of Psyche [Hardcover]

This grand, enthralling, wide-ranging project is a journey backwards into the deep history of the seemingly simple nineteenth-century word psychology, from ancient Greek psyche and logos, and then further back into proto-Indo-European and into Africa. A modern integration of the humanities, archaeology, sociocultural processes, neurology, biology and evolutionary theory sees psychological language as originating in Neolithic shamans, who were priests, mystics, doctors, politicians and psychologists. Coupling our enlarged brains unique cognitive fluidity and symbolic thought, with migration, mobility and cultural mixing, the result was modern minds, and also the science of psychology.

Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology, University College London, UK

Part 1: Evolution and Psychology  1. Evolution and Culture  2. Cultural Ecologies  3. Becoming Human  4. Tools for Global Psychology  Part 2: Origins of Greek Psychology  5. Ancient Europe  6. Mythos and Logos in Homer  7. Psyche in Homer  8. The Fate of Psyche  9. Shamanism in Ancient Greece  Part 3: Origins of Indian Psychology  10. India, Ancient and Modern  11. Sources of Indian Psychology  12. Vedic Psychology  

Richard Valentine is a member of the British Psychological Society and Associate Fellow of the Kirkby Laing Centre for Public Theology, a research institute in Cambridge, UK. From an academic background in philosophy and natural sciences, and after a career in education, he rel2