Psychological evaluation
Modern "Psychological evaluation" has been around for roughly 200 years, with roots that stem as far back as 2200 B.C. It started in China, and many psychologists throughout Europe worked to develop methods of testing into the 1900s. The first tests focused on aptitude. Eventually scientists tried to gauge mental processes in patients with brain damage, then children with special needs.
History of psychology
Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul (in the Christian sense of the term). The modern philosophical form of psychology was heavily influenced by the works of René Descartes (1596–1650), and the debates that he generated, of which the most relevant were the objections to his "Meditations on First Philosophy" (1641), published with the text. Also important to the later development of psychology were his "Passions of the Soul" (1649) and "Treatise on Man" (completed in 1632 but, along with the rest of "The World", withheld from publication after Descartes heard of the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo; it was eventually published posthumously, in 1664).