Byzantine psychology represents a fusion of Galenic physiology and anatomy with Aristotelian psychology.
In Byzantine anthropologies we find various concepts deriving from Ancient Greek philosophy and medicine side by side with significant commentators of Aristotle and the anthropological concepts of the Church Fathers. In general, the most important source was Aristotle, whose psychological thinking is contained principally in his work De anima, although some specific aspects of psychology, relating to sensation (De sensu), memory (De memoria et reminiscentia), and sleeping and dreaming (De somno, commented by Theodore Metochites) are contained in Parva naturalia (commentaries by Michael of Ephesus, Sophonias). For instance, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Sophonias’ paraphrase of Aristotle’s De anima or Nikephoros Blemmydes’ De anima draws on John Philoponos’ lost commentary on book 3 of the De anima. Later Gennadios claimed that even Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s De anima was dependent on Philoponos.
An important figure in terms of psychology in Byzantium is Galen, especially his adaptations of the Hippocratic four humors, his use of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics in creating an all encompassing medical theory. He was a significant source for the learned Byzantine physicians and philosophers. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Galen was regarded by the Byzantines to be the greatest medical authority they inherited from the time of the early Roman Empire. As a proof of that are the Byzantine transcriptions of Galen’s works which survive in large numbers. Galen adopted Aristotle’s basic threefold classification of the internal senses (imagination, cognition, and memory) and he specified the localization of these faculties in the anterior, middle, and posterior ventricles of the brain. The head was the centre of psychic life, and mental faculties were localized in the ventricles of the brain. The Byzantines accepted the Galenic notion of the brain as the organ responsible for the conversion of vital into animal spirits. The so-called cell doctrine remained almost unaltered during the whole of Byzantine thought.
A more coherent account of the soul is presented in the work On Human Nature by Nemesius of Emesa; it is a systematic attempt to harmonize medical philosophy and Christian anthropology. This treatise is a distillation of classical learning and attracted the attention of Early Byzantine thinkers (Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus); through them it influenced later Byzantine thinkers such as Meletios the Monk, whose synopsis of Christian and pagan ideas on the human constitution is composed almost entirely of excerpts from earlier authors. Through the works of Nemesius of Emesa and John of Damascus, Byzantine authors were also acquainted with a classification of emotions (pleasure, distress, fear, and anger).
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