ABSTRACT
Descartes’ legacy to Western thinking was a mind and body divided, the mind allocated to religion, and the body to science, except for their tenuous conjunction in the pineal gland. When psychology became a science it adopted the Cartesian dualism, and laid claim to the mind minus the pineal. Ever since, psychology has been polarized in its relationship to the body, physiological psychology notwithstanding. Hence the juxtaposition of nature versus nurture in its various guises, heredity versus environment, biological versus psychological, organic versus psychogenic, and so on.
