ABSTRACT

Psychology, as a study of the basic elements of human personality, evolved out of philosophy. For two thousand years, before the advent of psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth century, humanity's attempt to understand the human mind and imagination was centered totally within philosophical systems, speci®cally, within metaphysics as that branch of philosophy focusing on the ultimate nature of reality. In the East, Buddhism emerged in India about 500 BC, and spread to China and Japan. In the West, the work of Greek philosophers, primarily Plato, led to the development of systems of thought which attempted to understand the basic nature and structures of existence. Two central concepts which emerged through these philosophic re¯ections were those of being and becoming. From the work of Plato (Buchanan 1948), through Kant (Copleston 1994) and Schopenhauer (1969) and forward to the modern era with the work of Sartre (1974), these concepts have been developed as conceptual tools through which to contact and ponder the ultimate points of human existence.