From the Latin psychologia, itself derived from the Greek psychología (ψυχολογία). It is composed of psychḗ (ψυχή), meaning “soul,” “breath,” or “life principle,” and the suffix -logía (λογία), denoting “study,” “account,” or “systematic discourse.”

The Greek noun psychḗ originally conveyed the idea of breath as the animating force of a living being. In Homeric texts, it referred to the life that departs the body at death. Only later, in philosophical contexts—particularly in Plato and Aristotle—did it evolve toward the notion of the inner self or seat of consciousness. The word is commonly associated with the Indo-European root *bheue-, “to grow, to become,” reflecting the dynamic nature of life itself.

The suffix -logía (λογία), from lógos (λόγος), “word,” “reason,” or “principle,” establishes psychology as the structured discourse about the soul. Comparable formations entered English through Latin as well: biology (Latin biologia, from Greek bíos, βίος, “life”), theology (Latin theologia, from Greek theós, θεός, “god”), and anthropology (Latin anthropologia, from Greek ánthrōpos, ἄνθρωπος, “human being”). In each case, the Latinized form transmitted the Greek conceptual structure into the vocabulary of early modern European scholarship.

Originally, psychology did not designate an empirical science. In early modern Europe, it referred to philosophical reflection on the soul within theological frameworks. Only in the nineteenth century, particularly with Wilhelm Wundt’s experimental laboratory in 1879, did psychology begin to formalize itself as a scientific discipline grounded in observation and measurement.

Today, psychology encompasses cognitive science, behavioral analysis, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. Yet its etymological structure reminds us that beneath data and diagnostics lies a more ancient question: what animates human experience?

Psychology, at its root, is the disciplined attempt to give language to the invisible dimension of being.