Plato (427-334 BC) recorded perhaps the oldest surviving model of moral psychology in the western tradition. His Psychological ideas appear in his Dialogues, &The Republic.
In his quest of finding the true essence of the human psyche and the pursuit of the maintenance of the soul, Plato has philosophized through the teachings of Socrates within various concepts such as: Metaphysics “Platonic realism”, Theory of Forms.
Plato suggested that knowledge is innate and inborn. It resides inside the mind of a person. It means that people already have knowledge about everything, they don’t acquire it. They are born with this knowledge and understanding of the world around them. This is called the concept of innate ideas, which are present in our minds at birth. They're things we just know, not things we've learned through experience.
According to Plato, we can acquire this knowledge by looking inward. This method is called introspection in which inwardly reflection or observation is fortified and external observation is discouraged. Plato further postulated that if we want to acquire true knowledge then we have to look in our mind and soul. According to him, ideas are the true source of knowledge and as ideas resides in the mind and soul of a person, therefore true knowledge can only be gained through empiricism and observing facts. By doing this, a person can find solutions and explanations to the problems arising around him.(3)
“Platonism” the basis of Metaphysics is referred to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. Plato’s “metaphysics” is understood as Socrates’ division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual (Taylor, 1936). The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western psychology, philosophy and religion. Similar to Socrates’s idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his Allegory of the Cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are “shadows” of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances (Taylor, 1936).
The notion of Absolute Forms, for example, along with Jung’s methods of systematic inquiry foreshadows Jung’s theories of archetype and the analytic process investigation (Fitz-Randolph, 2009). According to Jung, the Collective Unconscious exists as a kind of repository for dreams, archetypes, symbols, and myths. Yet like Plato before him, Jung’s intuitively derived understanding needed empirical verification if it was to be taken seriously. Thus, in his autobiographical memoir, Memories, Dreams, and Reflection, Jung sets out to explain exactly how he arrived at his notion of the Collective Unconscious and archetype through his journey of self-observation (Fitz-Randolph, 2009). (1)
Plato’s psychology is nativistic but leaves ample room for developmental influences. He explicitly endorses a multistage theory of cognitive development. In Laws, for example, the Athenian stranger asserts that virtue and vice are known to the young only as pleasure and pain and that, since children instinctively love what is pleasurable and hate what is painful, the principal task of the educator is to make sure that true virtue becomes the object of love. Moreover, there are critical periods of development when the lessons of virtue are most effectively conveyed by music, since virtue fundamentally is a harmonious relationship between body and mind. This aim is furthered by close contact between parent and infant. by the rhythmic rocking of the young. The same theme is sounded in The Republic, in which the young are depicted as being out of harmony: Reason and passion have yet to establish the unique accord that constitutes virtue.
Hedonism - The soul is "subject to terrible and irresistible affections,"-pleasure and pain, rashness and fear, anger and hope and all-daring love."
Plato enumerates three classes of pleasures: (1) those of the body only, as relief of itching by scratching; (2) those in which affections of the body and the mind are combined, such as bodily pains accompanied by the hope of relief; and (3) those of the mind only, as in anger, fear, desire, sorrow, love, emulation, malin, and the like.
Over against these are set three classes of pure and true pleasures, namely, (1) those of simple qualities absolutely beautiful, such as straight lines and circles, pure elementary colors, smooth and clear sounds, sweet tastes; (2) those of an analogous sort unattended by pain, however and wherever experienced; and (3) the pleasures of knowledge. (4)
"A small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if pure and unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter as well as truer and fairer than a great pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind." - Plato
Plato's doctrine of pleasure and pain was developed in relation to the ethical controversies of his time and conditioned by current conceptions as well as by his whole ethical and metaphysical philosophy. He inquires into the nature of pleasure and pain with more thoroughness than his predecessors, but his analyses and inductions are imperfect and his conclusions in- consistent. Unable to accept the extreme Cynic view that pleasure is only negative, he adopts the Cyrenaic opinion that both pleasure and pain are motions or transitional processes to be distinguished from the neutral state in which they are absent; but he advances beyond the crude conceptions of them as smooth and rough by relating them more definitely to the conception of organic harmony. Pain is the process of the dissolution of this harmony, pleasure the process of its restoration; the perfect, undisturbed harmony itself is neutral. (4)
Reasoning [Ruling Part ]~ Reason rules in two ways: (1) Reason rules by looking out for the good of the soul as a whole. The satisfaction of particular desires is subordinated to the aims of the entire soul. (2) Reason rules and directs the soul towards its preferred objects, which are the goods of reason rather than of appetite.
Cooper, "For in the fourth book [Plato] assigns to reason a double job: to know the truth and to rule in the light of it."
Appetites ~Plato's attribution of appetites to all three parts indicates that reason desires knowledge and truth, spirit desires honor and victory in a sense closely related to that in which to appetite desires food, drink and sex.
Plato divided the soul into three parts: the appetitive part, the spirited or emotional part, and the intellectual part. The appetitive part seeks the fulfillment of various bodily pleasures such as food, drink, sex, etc. The spirited or emotional part seeks honor and dignity. Finally, the intellectual part seeks truth and knowledge.
The basic psychological structure described here of course centers upon reason ruling, supported by spirit, with the appetites suppressed.
The harmonious or rightly ordered soul, then, is one which practices the virtues of each part. The virtue of the appetites is moderation; the virtue of the spirit is courage; the virtue of the intellect is wisdom. Through these virtues the human soul attains a certain concord or integrity, which Plato understood as the only real happiness worthy of the name. (5) Or else we can say that the three working together for their own good ends is the highest kind of happiness one can have, according to Platonic Psychology.
References:
1. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/philosophy/influence-of-the-philosophy-of-plato-on-psychology-philosophy-essay.php
2. https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/history-of-psychology/classical-antiquity/platos-psychology/
3. http://psychologisthere.blogspot.com/2017/11/platos-contributions-to-psychology.html
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2178456.pdf
5. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Plato#Plato.E2.80.99s_Psychology_and_the_Integrated_Soul
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