ABSTRACT
The development of the discipline of psychology illustrates the many-sided nature of that knowledge, not only in the intellectual discipline of psychology, but also in the associated fields of psychiatry based in medicine, and psychotherapy based in schools initially springing up outside the accepted knowledge of the universities. Psychiatry is part of medical science, based in the strongly scientific medical model, but in practice often using methods derived from psychotherapy. Psychotherapy has by and large developed outside the university system, always putting considerable emphasis on the relationship between the therapist and the client. William James, in his massive Principles of Psychology, published originally in 1890, is offering an overview of psychology as a natural science as it was known at the time. No one could read Psychosynthesis, even less The Act of Will, and least of all most of Assagioli's articles, and think that this was the work of a normal' scientist.
