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Psychology is a collection of academic, clinical and industrial disciplines concerned with the explanation and prediction of
behavior, thinking, emotions, motivations, relationships, potentials and pathologies.
It might be said that many related disciplines live under the same name including: experimental psychology, which focuses on basic and applied science; humanistic psychology, which uses qualitative research rather than
conventional statistical methods to investigate the
subjective experience of human beings; clinical psychology
and counselling psychology, which focus primarily on
helping people overcome or better manage pathologies as well as transcend perceived limitations; and Industrial/Organizational
Psychology, which applies psychological principles to people working in organizations.
Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science, in part, by studying the behavior of individuals (alone or in groups) rather
than the behavior of the groups or aggregates themselves. While psychological questions were asked in antiquity (c.f., Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia or "On Memory and
Recollection"), psychology emerged as a separate discipline only recently. The first person to call himself a
"psychologist", Wilhelm Wundt, opened the first psychological laboratory
in 1879.
History
The root of the word psychology (psyche) means "soul" or "spirit" in Greek,
and psychology was sometimes considered a study of the soul (in a religious sense of this term), though its emergence as a
medical discipline can be seen in Thomas Willis' reference to psychology
(the "Doctrine of the Soul") in terms of brain function, as part of his 1672 anatomical treatise "De Anima Brutorum" ("Two
Discourses on the Souls of Brutes").
Until about the end of the 19th Century, psychology was regarded as a
branch of philosophy. Experimental psychology, as
introduced by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 at Leipzig University in Germany, did
not contain any religious implications. In the 1890s, Sigmund Freud invented and utilized a therapeutic method of uncovering repressed wishes, known as
psychoanalysis. Since then, psychology typically considered primarily
behavior (e.g., the behaviorism of John B. Watson and later psychologists), the mind (i.e., cognitive psychology), or both. Today it would be rare to find someone who considered psychology the
study of immaterial minds, let alone souls. However, there are many psychologists who believe in the soul and bring spirituality
into their psychological work. Of course, like all sciences that have broken off from philosophy, purely philosophical questions
about the mind are still studied by philosophers; the name of the philosophical subdiscipline which studies those questions is
philosophy of mind or philosophical
psychology.
Experimental psychology, the field founded by
Wilhelm Wundt and William James, focuses on general and basic questions concerning behavior, mental states, or both, including
theories of pathology which are also important to clinical psychology.
A key area of debate in psychology has been the extent to which our capacities are learnt versus the extent to which they are
innate (this issue is closely related to the more general nature-nurture debate in biology). The behaviorism of B.F. Skinner viewed behaviour as being
learnt through a process of conditioning - the association of stimuli with responses. The influence of
behaviorism took a blow with the work of the psycho-linguist Noam Chomsky
on language acquisition. Chomsky argued that the stimulus
available to an infant was simply not rich enough to allow language-learning through Skinnerian conditioning, and that the human
brain must have an innate capacity for, or predisposition towards language learning. This idea that the brain has a specialised
Language Acquisition Device in many ways laid the foundation for the field now known as
cognitive psychology, which tends to view the mind in terms
of more-or-less specialised functions or processes.
Humanistic psychology emerged in the 1950s in reaction
to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It stresses a phenomenological view of human experience and seeks to understand human
beings and their behavior by conducting qualitative research. The humanistic approach has its roots in existentialist thought (see Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre and Kierkegaard). The
founding theorists behind this school of thought are Abraham Maslow who
presented a hierarchy of human needs, Carl Rogers who created and developed
client centered therapy, and Fritz and Laura Perls who helped create and develop 'gestalt therapy'.
Modern psychology
Clinical and counseling psychology both focus on understanding and treatment of behavioral or mental problems.
Psychiatry is the medical field specializing in mental health issues, thereby
overlapping with clinical psychology. Clinical and counselling psychologists often work in co-operation with psychiatrists,
social workers, psychiatric nurses and 'lay' counselors. Psychiatrists are often involved in providing psycho-pharmacological
care including antidepressant, antianxiety, antipsychotic and mood-stabilizing medication. Services aimed at mental or behavioral
problems are also often provided by traditional healers and religious counselors. Fields such as neuroscience, political science,
media studies and gender studies have also come to be seen as closely related to psychology. The first and dominant training
model is the scientist-practitioner model, also known as the Boulder model, leading to a traditional research Ph.D. In the mid
1970s a growing movement for relevant practitioner training led to the emergence of the Vail model, a professional-practitioner
emphasis, leading to a Psy.D. The National Council of Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology (NCSPP) is the
organizational focus of this on-going effort to establish training of high quality practitioners.
Applied psychology is a more general term, referring to
solving problems and answering questions that could help solve problems faced by people and society. For example, researching how
animals won't eat novel foods after getting ill, even if the food didn't cause the illness, has helped explain why cancer
patients have difficulty eating after chemotherapy.
During the third through sixth centuries in India, a branch of study developed within
Buddhism that investigated the functions of the human mind, and the relationship of
these to human behavior, mental illness, and methods for correcting delusory thinking that leads to suffering. This school was
known as Yogacara (also known by the names Mind-only, Consciousness-only, etc).
Practitioners of Psychoanalysis of the schools of Sigmund Freud , Jung, and Adler all insisted they had proved their own theories
through their patients, but have faced criticism due to the subjectivity of their research. It is clear that the mutually
contradictory theories of those different schools cannot all be true.
In recent years and particularly in the United States, a major split has been developing between academic research
psychologists in universities and some branches of clinical psychology. Many academic psychologists believe that these clinicians
use therapies based on discredited theories and unsupported by empirical evidence of their effectiveness. From the other side,
these clinicians believe that the academics are ignoring their experience in dealing with actual patients. The disagreement has
resulted in the formation of the American Psychological Society by the research psychologists as a new body distinct from the
American Psychological Association.
Topics in psychology
Major nineteenth and twentieth century schools of thought
See List of psychologists
Divisions and approaches in psychology
These might be overlapping, of course.
Some related disciplines
For a full list of topics, please see the list of psychological topics.
External links
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