(overview, Branches and history, goals)

1.1
What is Psychology?

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior, according to the American Psychological
Association. It is the study of the mind, how it works, and how it affects behavior.

The APA adds that it “embraces all aspects of the human experience, from the functions of the
brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged.”

Psychologists and psychiatrists work together to help people with mental health conditions, but
they are not quite the same.

A psychologist treats a patient through psychotherapy, helping to relieve symptoms through

behavioral change. The role of the psychiatrist, who is a medical doctor, focuses more on
prescribing medication and other interventions to manage mental health conditions.

Psychology is the study of behavior and the mind.

Explanation:
The work of a psychologist can range from counseling individuals with anxiety to advising
companies on how to build better teams.

The mind is highly complex, and conditions that relate to it can be hard to treat.

Thought processes, emotions, memories, dreams, perceptions, and so on cannot be seen

physically, like a skin rash or heart defect.

While physical signs of some mental health issues can be observed, such as the plaques that
develop with Alzheimer’s disease, many theories of psychology are based on observation of
human behavior.
A practicing psychologist will meet with patients, carry out assessments to find out what their
concerns are and what is causing any difficulties, and recommend or provide treatment, for
example, through counseling and psychotherapy.

Psychologists may have other roles, too. They may carry out studies to advise health authorities
and other bodies on social and other strategies, assess children who find it difficult to learn in
school, give workshops on how to prevent bullying, work with recruitment teams in companies,
and much more.

Branches of psychology

There are different types of psychology that serve different purposes. There is no fixed way of
classifying them, but here are some common types.

Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology integrates science, theory, and practice in order to understand, predict and
relieve problems with adjustment, disability, and discomfort. It promotes adaption, adjustment,
and personal development.

A clinical psychologist concentrates on the intellectual, emotional, biological, psychological,

social, and behavioral aspects of human performance throughout a person’s life, across varying
cultures and socioeconomic levels.

Clinical psychology can help us to understand, prevent, and alleviate psychologically-caused

distress or dysfunction, and promote an individual’s well-being and personal development.

Psychological assessment and psychotherapy are central to the practice of clinical psychology,
but clinical psychologists are often also involved in research, training, forensic testimony, and
other areas.

Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology investigates internal mental processes, such as problem solving, memory,
learning, and language. It looks at how people think, perceive, communicate, remember, and
learn. It is closely related to neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.

Cognitive psychologists look at how people acquire, process, and store information.

Practical applications include how to improve memory, increase the accuracy of decision-
making, or how to set up educational programs to boost learning.

Developmental psychology

This is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that a person experiences over
the life span, often referred to as human development.

It focuses not only on infants and young children but also teenagers, adults, and older people.

Factors include motor skills, problem solving, moral understanding, acquiring language,
emotions, personality, self-concept, and identity formation.

It also looks at innate mental structures against learning through experience, or how a person’s
characteristics interact with environmental factors and how this impacts development.

Developmental psychology overlaps with fields such as linguistics.

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology looks at how human behavior, for example language, has been affected
by psychological adjustments during evolution.
An evolutionary psychologist believes that many human psychological traits are adaptive in that
they have enabled us to survive over thousands of years.

Forensic psychology

Forensic psychology involves applying psychology to criminal investigation and the law.

A forensic psychologist practices psychology as a science within the criminal justice system and
civil courts.

It involves assessing the psychological factors that might influence a case or behavior and
presenting the findings in court.

Health psychology

Health psychology is also called behavioral medicine or medical psychology.

It observes how behavior, biology, and social context influence illness and health.

A physician often looks first at the biological causes of a disease, but a health psychologist will
focus on the whole person and what influences their health status. This may include their
socioeconomic status, education, and background, and behaviors that may have an impact on the
disease, such as compliance with instructions and medication.

Health psychologists usually work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings.

Neuropsychology

Neuropsychology looks at the structure and function of the brain in relation to behaviors and
psychological processes. A neuropsychology may be involved if a condition involves lesions in
the brain, and assessments that involve recording electrical activity in the brain.
A neuropsychological evaluation is used to determine whether a person is likely to experience
behavioral problems following suspected or diagnosed brain injury, such as a stroke.

The results can enable a doctor to provide treatment that may help the individual achieve
possible improvements in cognitive damage that has occurred.

Occupational psychology

Occupational or organizational psychologists are involved in assessing and making

recommendations about the performance of people at work and in training.

They help companies to find more effective ways to function, and to understand how people and
groups behave at work.

This information can help improve effectiveness, efficiency, job satisfaction, and employee
retention.

Social psychology

Social psychology uses scientific methods to understand how social influences impact human
behavior. It seeks to explain how feelings, behavior, and thoughts are influenced by the actual,
imagined or implied presence of other people.

A social psychologist looks at group behavior, social perception, non-verbal behavior,

conformity, aggression, prejudice, and leadership. Social perception and social interaction are
seen as key to understanding social behavior.

Other branches include military, consumer, educational, cross-cultural, and environmental

psychology. The number of branches continues to grow.
 History

In a philosophical context, psychology was around thousands of years ago in ancient Greece,
Egypt, India, Persia, and China.

In 387 BCE, Plato suggested that the brain is where mental processes take place, and in 335 BCE
Aristotle suggested that it was the heart.

Avicenna, the famous Muslim doctor, born in 980 AD, studied and treated epilepsy, nightmares,
and poor memory. The first hospitals treating psychiatric conditions were said to have been set
up by Islamic doctors in medieval times.

In 1774, Franz Mesmer proposed that hypnosis, or “mesmerism,” might help cure some types of
mental illness.

In 1793, Philippe Pinel released the first patients with mental health problems from confinement
in a move that signalled a move toward more humane treatment.

In the early days of psychology there were two dominant theoretical perspectives regarding how
the brain worked, structuralism and functionalism.

In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt, Germany, founded psychology as an independent experimental field of

study. He set up the first laboratory that carried out psychological research exclusively at Leipzig
University. Wundt is known today as the father of psychology.

In 1890, an American philosopher, William James, published a book entitled Principles of

Psychology. It was discussed by psychologists worldwide for many decades. In the same year,
New York State passed the State Care Act, in which people with mental health problems were to
leave poor houses and enter the hospital for treatment.

In 1890, the American Psychological Association (APA) was founded, under the leadership of G.
Stanley Hall.
Hermann Abbingaus, who lived from 1850 1909, and worked at the University of Berlin, was the
first psychologist to study memory extensively.

Ivan Pavlov, who lived from 1849 to 1936, carried out the famous experiment which showed that
dogs salivated when they expected food, introducing the concept of “conditioning.”

The Austrian Sigmund Freud, who lived from 1856 to 1939, introduced the field of
psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy. He used interpretive methods, introspection, and
clinical observations to gain understanding of the mind.

He focused on resolving unconscious conflict, mental distress, and psychopathology. Freud

argued that the unconscious was responsible for most of people’s thoughts and behavior, and for
mental health problems.

E. B Titchener, an American, strongly believed in structuralism, which focuses on the question:

“What is consciousness?”

William James and John Dewey were strong believers in functionalism, which addressed the
“What is consciousness for?”

The debate between the functionalists and structuralists led to a rapid growth in interest in
psychology in the United States and elsewhere, and the establishment of the first psychology
laboratory in the U.S., at Johns Hopkins University.

Behaviorism

In 1913 an American psychologist, John B. Watson, founded a new movement that changed the
focus of psychology.
Behavior, he argued, is not the result of internal mental processes, but the result of how we
respond to the environment.

Behaviorism focused on how people learn new behavior from the environment.

Humanism

Humanists viewed behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory as too dehumanizing.

Rather than being victims of the environment or the unconscious, they proposed that humans are
innately good and that our own mental processes played an active role in our behavior.

The humanist movement puts high value on the emotions, free will, and a subjective view of
experience.

Cognitive theory

Introduced in the 1970s, this is seen as the most recent school of thought in psychology.

Cognitive theorists believe that we take in information from our environment through our senses
and then process the data mentally by organizing it, manipulating it, remembering it, and relating
it to information we have already stored.

Cognitive theory is applied to language, memory, learning, perceptual systems, mental disorders,
and dreams.

Today

Nowadays, psychologists study all these approaches and choose what appears to be best from
each approach for a particular situation.
 The Goals of Psychology

The four main goals of psychology are to describe, explain, predict and change the behavior
and mental processes of others

To Describe diagnosis

Describing a behavior or cognition is the first goal of psychology. This can enable researchers to
develop general laws of human behavior.

For example, through describing the response of dogs to various stimuli, Ivan Pavlov helped
develop laws of learning known as classical conditioning theory.

To Explain

Once researchers have described general laws behavior, the next step is to explain how or why
this trend occurs. Psychologists will propose theories which can explain a behavior.

To Predict
Psychology aims to be able to predict future behavior from the findings of empirical research. If
a prediction is not confirmed, then the explanation it is based on might need to be revised.

For example, classical conditioning predicts that if a person associates a negative outcome with a
stimuli they may develop a phobia or aversion of the stimuli.

To Change

Once psychology has described, explained and made predictions about behavior, changing or
controlling a behavior can be attempted.
 For example, interventions based on classical conditioning, such as systematic desensitization,
have been used to treat people with anxiety disorders including phobias.

The Importance of Psychology in Everyday Life

Theoretical Aspects: Psychology examines in its theoretical aspects psychological phenomena

and behavioral patterns that appear on the individual's external behavioral reactions to access
general principles and laws. It controls the presence of a particular event, mechanism and how it
appears.

Application Aspects: Through applied studies, psychology employs theoretical principles and
laws in the process of mentoring, controlling and changing human behaviors for the better.

Applied psychology designs criteria and standards that depend on distinguishing normal
behaviors from abnormal behaviors, i.e., judging behavior whether it is normal or abnormal
through these criteria and standards.

Psychology is very important in the lives of different individuals and communities. At the origin
of psychological studies, psychology is concerned with the treatment and understanding of
human behavior. It attempts to bring about the required change and modification of this
behavior.

Psychology can also be used in different fields of educational life, such as books, curricula, and
various teaching aids.

➮Psychology can control individual behaviors and predict their occurrence.

➮It can study the different types of human and animal behavior.

➮It can study the laws that affect psychological phenomena, interpret them, predict them, and try
to modify them if they need modification.

➮It can assist individuals in selecting ways and types of thinking.

➮It can assist students in investing their time in the right way of studying and gaining
knowledge.

➮It can help individuals organize their different lifestyles.

➮It can help build relationships based on mutual respect between different individuals and
groups.