Introduction / by Jean-Yves Chateau -- The challenge for psychology -- The ethical and religious challenge of the problem -- The history of ideas and its dialectic of the whole -- Animal and man in light of the ontogenesis of the vital and the psychical -- First lesson -- Antiquity -- Pythagoras -- Anaxagoras -- Socrates -- Plato -- Aristotle -- The stoics -- Conclusion of the first lesson -- Second lesson -- Problems and challenges -- The apologists -- Saint Augustine -- Saint Thomas -- Giordano Bruno -- Saint Francis of Assisi -- Montaigne -- Descartes -- Malebranche -- Bossuet -- La Fontaine.