The essence of rage: Galen on emotional disturbances and their physical correlates

Abstract

In Galen’s psychology, a post-Platonist ethical-behavioural model sits alongside physical and physiological explanations deriving from medicine and biology; and it is not always clear how the different models are harmonized. This chapter explores the problem by focusing on one particular are of his psycho physical theory, his account of the relationship between soul and body in a range of emotionally disturbed states (e.g. anger, distress, shame) which involve the heart and the blood. It explores the significance—philosophical, philosophical-historical, diagnostic—of Galen’s claim of the priority of the physical in such states. Through close consideration of a number of relevant texts, light is shed on a neglected area of Galen’s medical-philosophical thought, at the same time helping to illuminate the problematic question of Galen’s ‘models of the soul’ more generally.

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