Despite centuries of advancements, the human mind still seems to be an unsolvable mystery in mainstream psychology today. One reason may be that modern psychologists still search for answers in the wrong place (usually in the brain).

In this course, another path is taken – a path grounded by continental European scholars between 1880 and 1950 (among them, Koffka, Werner, Vygotsky, Luria, and Anokhin). Picking up from where these scholars left off, we will go further and find answers to several interesting questions, among them: What is life? What is the mind? (We will also find that the mind is not in the brain, but rather emerges in the interaction of the brain and mental environment).

We will then dive deeper to discover that the nature of the human mind is qualitatively different from the minds of all other mental beings we know. We will endeavor to explain human consciousness, free will, and some other uniquely-human ways of being. And in the end, we will close by taking a closer look into how humans – even ‘thought being’ humans – can be very different depending on the stage of thought development available to them.