Concept
Romantic psychology
Overview
Romantic psychology was an intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe, particularly in Germany. It was a response to the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and rationality, which Romantic psychologists believed neglected the importance of emotions, imagination, and intuition in human experience.
Romantic psychology is characterized by its philosophical approach, its interest in subjectivity and personal experience, and its attachment to the concept of the soul or spirit. It emphasizes the subjective experience of the individual and focuses on the study of emotions, intuition and imagination.
Romantic psychologists sought to understand the links between the mind and the body, as well as the unconscious processes of the human psyche. Major subjects in the field of Romantic psychology included mystical ecstasy, poetic and artistic inspiration, and dreams. The concepts associated with it are now seen as the origin of dynamic psychology. The role of Romantic psychology in the emergence of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology remains controversial.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Both of these distinctions—that between a speculative and an empirical, and that between a scientific and a popular treatment—affect the subsequent history of the study. Psychology is sometimes understood to mean the results of casual observation of our own minds by what is termed introspection, and by the interpretation of what we may observe in others. Such observations are in the first place carried on under the…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
States what Romantic psychology is.
The state of being in love, so remarkable psychologically, and the normal prototype of the psychoses, corresponds to the highest stage of these emanations, in contrast to the state of self-love.
Sigmund Freud, Totem and taboo
States what Romantic psychology is.
It is fair to say that the psychology of a separate and independent consciousness began as an intellectual formulation of those facts of morality which treated the most important kind of action as a private concern, something to be enacted and concluded within character as a purely personal possession. The religious and metaphysical interests which wanted the ideal to be a separate realm finally coincided with a…
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct
Close in meaning to Romantic psychology; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Frederick C. Beiser
- Anima mundi
- Spirit (animating force)
- Mind–body dualism
- German Romanticism
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
- Geist
- Algebra
- Metaphysics
- Psychiatry
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Mental disorder
- Materialism
- Gustav Fechner
- Naturphilosophie
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychotherapy
- Sigmund Freud
- Soul
- Johann Gottfried Herder
- Age of Enlightenment
- Introspection
- Humanistic psychology
- Natural science
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Romanticism.