Ancient philosophers like St.Augustine and St.Thomas believed that there was a complete division between mind and body. It was the philosophers from Seventeenth Century, for the first time pointed out that mind and body were related in significant way.
Descartes (1596-1650) was well aware of the physiological knowledge of the actions of muscles, nerves and other biological structures, the circulation of blood (discovered by Harvey) and of digestion correctly. He knew that muscles operate in opposing pairs. He speculated the functioning of nerves to be important for sensation and for movement. He also speculated that nerves are hollow tubes which carry animal spirits in different direction. Animal spirits are the material substances which could move quickly. Descartes said that human body is just like a machine, when it is considered without its soul. He pointed out that animals are only machines with various kinds of reflexes, instincts and other automatic actions. Animals have no souls, and therefore, they are automata. This is a mechanical view about the nature of the body. The view assumes that body refers to all that is unanimate. There is a soul or mind in every person. It is a thinking substance, which has the power to direct and alter the mechanical activities of the body. Soul refers to all that is in us.
For Descartes, mind and body consists of two different substances. Body consists of extended matter, but soul consists of unextended matter. However, they are connected in some activities such as sensation, emotions and perceptions. Thus the relationship between the mind and body is one of the interactions. Pineal gland is the point of interaction, because it is the only one which has no pairs. For instance, the images from the two eyes set up action in animal spirits, which stimulates pineal gland making an impression on it. Through mind, one would sense the impression. If the mind wishes to remember something, the pineal gland gets activated, set up animal in pores of brain to find out traces left by the objects or events encountered previously. Descartes' psychological interactionism served as a model for several modern psychological schools like psychoanalysis and functionalism.
Gotfried Leibnitz (1646-1716), a great mathematician, wrote in his Nouveaux Essais about psychological parallelism, which relates spirit or mind monads to body monads, an alternative theory to Descartes' interactionism. The monad is an element of all being and a point of force. It is indestructible, uncreatable and inimitable, but it is not static. For Leibnitz, world is an infinite pluralism of independent monads. A human individual is made up of many monads. Some monads have higher degree of consciousness and some have lower degree of consciousness (unconsciousness). Leibnitz called lower degree of consciousness as petiles perception (little perception). For example, the sound of single falling drop of water may be regarded as petiles perception. These monads will not interact. Each monad is self contained. Thus, mind monads and body monads are not usually related. They follow a parallel course (Parallelism). Leibnitz concepts of degree of consciousness and unconsciousness were the major source for Freud and Jung. It was not Freud, but Leibnitz, who used the term conscious first.
Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), pointed out that mind and body could not be separated from each other. They are different aspects of same substances. As they are different aspects, bodily activities do not affect or cause changes in mental activities and mental activities do not affect bodily activities (Psychological double aspecticism).
Recent approaches denied the existence of mind. It is called Monism. The first support in modern period for monism was given by J.B.Watson.
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