Psychology

Psychology is the systematic study and evaluation of mind and behavior. The word psychology comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul," "mind") and -λογία -ology ("study").

Paradigms of Psychology

The most fundamental paradigm in psychology is the assumption that the human mind is a manifestation of the brain. This idea is in opposition to the traditional (religious) belief in the soul.

Unlike fields such as physics or biology that attempt to work towards a uniting frame or theory for all hypothesis generated, psychology has traditionally focused on defining different schools of thought with substantially different unifying principles and little effort is made to unite these different schools.

There is a primary division between clinical or applied psychology which focuses on helping people directly through various applications of theory and experimental or research oriented psychology which focuses on applying the scientific method to ascertain the foundations of thought and action.

Most meta-analysis of the field divides psychologist into 5 different paradigms:

• Cognitive psychology- This school of thought has a strong focus on understanding the mechanisms of mind in order to explain behavior. It often uses analogies to computers to accomplish this task, one of its great themes is the idea of the Computational Theory of Mind.

• Behavioral psychology- This school of thought views the mind of the organism as a black box which is impossible to describe empirically, therefore the focus is on understanding behavior as a byproduct of environment. Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner epitomize this philosophy with their focus on classical conditioning and instrumental learning.

• Psychoanalytic psychology- This school of thought attempts to understand mind and behavior as a product of the unconscious. It is most closely linked with the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud believed that much of behavior is related to repressed sexuality, while Jung and others extended his ideas to include other forms of repression. Psychoanalytic psychology is primarily used in clinical settings though it is not unheard of for researchers to appeal to Freudian concepts.

• Existential psychology and Humanistic psychology- While these schools of thought differ in some fundamental ways they are often linked together because of their focus on differences and the importance of the individual over generalized rules. Existential Psychology emerges from French Existential philosophy most notably linked to Jean-Paul Sartre. It places great importance on Existential angst as an inevitability of existence, and that the role of psychology is to help individuals recognize their angst and come to terms with it. Humanistic approaches to psychology are closely linked to the ideas of Abraham Maslow and his idea of the Hierarchy of Needs. To Maslow psychological illness is a consequence of the difference between the idealized self and the actual self, the role of the psychologist is to help the person either adjust his idealized self image or improve his actual self. Carl Roger's ideas of Client Centered Therapy are also closely linked to humanistic approaches.

• Evolutionary psychology and Biologic based psychology- These approaches attempt to understand mind and behavior as products of biologic interactions and evolutionary history. This school of thought is heavily researched based. Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively recent development, and many of its proponents believe that a strongly biologic approach to psychology may ultimately serve as a unifying principle for the field of psychology.

History

For a more detailed treatment, see History of psychology.

Psychology is viewed as a relatively young discipline. It started with Wilhelm Wundt and "introspection", continued on with William James, and was later influenced by Charles Darwin and the Theory of evolution.

Sigmund Freud and his psychodynamics had an enormous influence on psychology which continues to this day, e.g., the concept of an unconscious mind being able to change and direct behavior. He also posited that people go through developmental stages in which their mind and behavior change as they grow up and grow old, an idea taken up by Jean Piaget.

Ivan Pavlov's work on classical conditioning was pivotal. It became combined with the concepts developed in functionalism and the field of behavioral psychology was born (see B.F. Skinner), and it was hoped that psychology could became a hard science like physics with mathematical rigor. Skinner also thought that all of human behavior was a function of conditioning and instrumental learning.

During the 1960s several developments altered the course of psychological research. Several experiments had begin turning up anomalous results. One of the most famous is the Garcia effect where an animal that is exposed to a novel food and then made sick instantly learns to no longer desire that food. Noam Chomsky showed that language acquisition follows seemingly innate rules. Thus cognitive psychology was born as a reaction against behaviorism. Cognitive psychologist attempted to understand the "black box" of the mind through computational analysis, modeling and rigorous experimentation.

Stanley Milgram published his works on the Milgram experiment which demonstrated that normal individuals would obey an authority figure and endanger the health and life of other people. This was also linked to Philip Zimbardo's work on the Stanford prison experiment demonstrating the ability for college students to quickly turn into torturers.

Fields of Psychology

While embracing one or several (referred to as eclectic) of the paradigms listed earlier individual psychologist, psychiatrist and therapist can work in a range of sub-fields that deal with the total spectrum of human interactions. These include but are not limited to:

• Community psychology

• Affective psychology

• Developmental psychology is the study of how mental processes and behavior change with aging.

• Health psychology/behavioral medicine focuses on the impact of psychological factors on behaviors that are relevant to physical health. Researchers in this field study topics such as substance abuse, obesity, and exercise.

• Industrial/organizational psychology

• Neuroscience

• Social psychology is the study of social behavior or interpersonal interactions. Social psychologists study issues such as the way in which attitudes towards other people are formed, or the effect that our perceptions of another person's behavior have on our interactions with that person.

• Abnormal psychology