The concept of ‘First Movements’ — known in Latin as *propatheiai* or *prima motu* and in Greek as *prokataraktikai kinēseis* — occupies a decisive position in the ancient and early Christian psychology of emotion as treated by the depth-psychology corpus. Richard Sorabji’s reconstruction of the Stoic lineage, from Zeno and Chrysippus through Seneca and Epictetus to the Christian appropriations of Origen, Evagrius, and Augustine, establishes first movements as involuntary, pre-emotional stirrings — contractions, expansions, trembling, pallor, the sinking feeling in the chest — that precede both assent and full-blown passion. The theoretical stakes are high: can the wise person claim freedom from emotion (*apatheia*) while still undergoing these unavoidable somatic perturbations? Seneca’s innovation, traced by Sorabji against Cicero’s earlier formulation of ‘little contractions’ (*contractiunculae*), is to locate first movements strictly before judgement and assent, opening a therapeutically vital time-gap in which the disciplined agent may decline to ratify the nascent impulse. The concept undergoes a signal transformation in Christian thought: Origen conflates first movements with ‘bad thoughts’ (*logismoi*), and Evagrius systematises them as the eight demonic temptations that precede sin, ancestors of the seven cardinal vices. Augustine mobilises the concept against his own will in the analysis of sexual desire. Margaret Graver’s complementary account clarifies the Stoic delimitation of *pathos* against mere physiological arousal. The tension between voluntary and involuntary, between therapy and grace, gives this concept its enduring psychological resonance.