What is Psychology?

Psychology is a very broad topic; it ranges from the brain

to how we perceive information from the outside world, how
we learn, how we store information, how we interact with
others, how all of this changes over a lifetime, what is mental
illness, and how we treat that? There are all these and even
more issues in psychology.
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When people think of psychology, they often think of
clinicians, such as those portrayed on television and in films -
people who work with the mentally ill or mad. Ideas about
Sigmund Freud and his theories of the id, ego, and superego
are also common associations with the field of psychology.
Others will think psychology is about consciousness, the
mind, psyche, or brain—and wonder how these entities are
different or similar. Somewhat less frequently, people might
think not about human psychology but instead about rats
running mazes, pigeons operating machinery, monkeys using
sign language, salivating dogs and ringing bells, and even the
mating habits of ducks and other animals.
 Fundamentals of Psychology
Definitions throughout history
Psychology dates back to Ancient Greece and Ancient
Rome. However, at that time it was philosophical and dealt
with the concept of soul. The term psychology derives from
the Greek roots psyche (meaning: soul, mind, or spirit),
and logos (meaning: study, knowledge, or word). Psychology
is literally the study of the soul or mind.
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Through the mid-1900s, psychologists redefined their field
simply as the study of behaviour. Perceiving people as
materialistic, seeing the human mind as mechanical and
omitting the question of the “soul” allowed scientists to make
verifiable and objective predictions of mental processes based
on observable acts determined by natural laws. Psychology
started to turn into science.
Generally, psychology is the science of human psyche,
behaviour and mental processes. Where science means
making verifiable, objective predictions, behaviour stands for
observable acts, and mental processes are storing, recalling,
and using information or feelings.

Nature-nurture debate

The nature nurture debate centres on the question of

whether human capabilities are inborn or acquired through
experience. The nature view holds that human beings enter
the world with an inborn store of knowledge and
understanding of realty. The nature view holds that
knowledge is acquired through experiences and interactions
with the world. Although some psychologists still argue that
human thought and behaviour result primarily from biology or
primarily from experience, most psychologists take a more
integrated approach. They acknowledge that biological
processes affect thoughts, feelings, and behaviour, but say
that experience leaves its mark, too.

Basic disciplines of psychology

Basic disciplines of psychology are divided

into theoretical and applied disciplines.

Theoretical disciplines

Theoretical disciplines involve such psychological

phenomenon and facts, which have the most general
character and cover psychological phenomenon from the
basic views. Knowledge obtained from research is then used
in applied disciplines.

1. General Psychology (Cognitive,

Experimental,..)

Basic theoretical questions, which give us a general

psychological profile of human beings.

2. Developmental Psychology

Behavioural changes, factors, aspects and conditions

shaping the psychological development of a person. It is
concerned with human development and the factors that
shape behaviour form birth to old age.
3. Personality Psychology

Examines structure and development of human beings,

describes and explains how people differ in their behaviour
and on the other side what they have in common. Concerns
about character and temperament and their generating.
Studies the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that define
an individual’s personal style of interacting with the world.

4. Social psychology

Defines social determinants of people, integration of people

into human relations, social communication and socialization.
It is interested in how people perceive and interpret their
social world and how their beliefs, emotions, and behaviours
are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others.

5. Evolutionary psychology

How evolution has shaped mind and behaviour (memory,

perception, language, natural and sexual selection).

6. Psychopathology

Psychological disturbances, describes them and tries to

define their origin and development

Applied disciplines

Applied disciplines focus on concrete psychological fields of

human activities. They try to apply obtained knowledge.
Applied disciplines encompass both psychological research
that is designed to help individuals overcome practical
problems and the application of this research in applied
settings. Much of applied psychology research is utilized in
other fields like business management, etc.

 1. Clinical Psychology

o Apply psychological principles to the diagnosis and

treatment of emotional and behavioural problems.
Clinical psychology is concerned with cognition and
diagnosis definition of mental disorders

o Interview, observation and psychological tests are

used to define diagnosis and assess treatment

 2. Educational Psychology

 3. Psychology of work and organization

Examples of other major subfields of

psychology

(Show more...)

Additional materials

 Developmental psychology...
 Abnormal psychology...
 Evolutionary psychology...
 Psychology of work and organization: E.g. Hawthorne
studies...

The historical origins of Psychology

 The roots of psychology can be traced to the great
philosophers of ancient Greece. The most famous of them,
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, posed fundamental questions
about mental life. Other psychological questions deal with the
nature of the body and human behaviour, and they have an
equally long history.

HIPPOCRATES (460-370 BC) Greek physician

– „father of medicine“

Hippocrates concluded that all disorders (both mental

and physical) were caused by natural factors such as
inherited susceptibility to disease, organic injury, and an
imbalance of bodily fluids.
He believed everything is made from four elements—earth,
air, fire, and water - and that humans, too, are made up of
these elements. He associated them with four humors in the
body. Earth with black bile, air with yellow bile, fire
with blood, and water with phlegm. Individuals for whom
the humors are properly balanced are healthy; an imbalance
among the humors results in illness.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher

Aristotle was one of Plato’s most brilliant students. He is

known to tutor Alexander the Great.
Aristotle was the first philosopher to extensively treat
many topics that were later to become part of psychology. In
his vast writings, he covered memory, sensation, sleep,
dreams, geriatrics, and learning. He also began his book De
Anima (On the Soul) with what is considered to be the first
history of psychology. Taken alone, Aristotle’s contributions to
psychology were truly impressive. It must be realized,
however, that with the possible exception of mathematics, he
made contributions to every branch of knowledge. The
influence of his thoughts on such philosophical and scientific
topics as logic, metaphysics, physics, biology, ethics, politics,
rhetoric, and poetics have lasted to the present time. It is
often said that Aristotle was the last human to know
everything that was knowable during his lifetime.
For Aristotle, as for most Greek philosophers, a soul is that
which gives life; therefore, all living things possess a soul.
According to Aristotle, there are three types of souls, and a
living thing’s potential (purpose) is determined by what type
of a soul it possesses.

 A vegetative (or nutritive) soul

 A sensitive soul

 A rational soul

Schools of psychology

PSYCHOPHYSICS

Scientists were willing to explore new research methods in

connection to the human mind, for example Weber studied
people's mental perceptions – he called
it Psychophysics (studying the physics of the mind). For
example he discovered the “Just Noticeable Difference”.
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The JND (or difference threshold) is the minimum level of
detectable difference between two measurable stimuli. This
scientific calculation has been used to study various
dimensions such as brightness of lights, length of lines and
the loudness of sounds.)
E.g. Visual Psychophysics...

ASSOCIATIONISM - WILHELM WUNDT (1832–

1920)

Events, experiments and findings of psychophysics

suggested, that a science of the mind can exist. The first
psychologist Wilhelm Wundt elevated psychology as a
science. He is called the father of modern Psychology,
because he founded the first experimental lab devoted to
psychology (opened in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany) and he
wrote the first textbook; the Principles of Physiological
Psychology (also 1879).
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Wundt studied colour vision, visual illusions, attention, and
feelings. He favoured a procedure that he
called introspection - inspecting the contents of your
consciousness, in other words looking into your mind and
reporting what is going on in there (self-observation). He
presented various kinds of lights, textures, and sounds and
asked subjects to report the intensity and quality of their
sensations. There was a controversy over the techniques
Wundt was using and how scientific they were. Wundt was
searching for the basic elements of conscious processes and
discovered how the basic elements are connected
– associationism (the school is sometimes
called structuralism).
Associationism is the philosophical belief that mental
phenomena, such as learning, remembering, and imagining,
can be explained in terms of the laws of association (law of
similarity, law of contrast, law of touch in space and time).

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

Gestalt psychology is a field that focuses on our ability to

perceive overall patterns. Gestalt psychologists (C. Ehrensen,
M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka, W. Kohler) rejected the idea that a
perception can be broken down into its component parts. A
melody broken up into individual notes is no longer a melody.
Their slogan was, “The whole is different from the sum of
its parts.” According to Gestalt psychologists, visual
perception is an active creation, not just the adding up of
pieces.

Reversible figures, stimuli that can be perceived in more

than one way:
Part a is called the Necker cube, after the psychologist who
first called attention to it. Which is the front face of the cube?
You can see it either way. Part b is either a vase or two
profiles. In part c, with a little imagination, you might see a
woman’s face or a man blowing a horn. Part d shows both an
old woman and a young woman. Almost everyone sees one or
the other immediately, but many people lock into one
perception so tightly that they cannot see the other one.
Overall, the point of the reversible figures is that we
perceive by imposing order, not just by adding up lines
and points (as in associationism).
 The Gestalt psychologists described several principles of
how we organize perceptions into meaningful wholes
(proximity, similarity, continuation, closure, common
fate or good figure).

SIGMUND FREUD (1856 – 1939)

Freud was the first to use psychology as a way

of medical treatment (therapeutic method), because he had
experiences with mentally disturbed patients. Up to then,
most behaviour problems were labelled as “hysteria”, but
Freud focused on understanding the unconscious
motivations (i.e. basic sexual and aggressive instincts) that
caused mal-behaviour. His method
of psychoanalysis emphasizes the unconscious mind and
focuses on internal, unconscious mental processes, motives
and desires, and childhood conflicts. Freud used techniques
such as dream interpretation or free association to
search for inner conflicts that caused psychological problems.
He had a non-scientific perspective.
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Freud thought there were three components to our psyche:
Id, Ego and Super-ego.

 ID

 SUPEREGO

 EGO

An example of an inner conflict: (Show more...)

Many times the cause of psychological problems is below
our level of consciousness. So we don't even know about the
conflict that's going on, but it is shaping our behaviour. Freud
illustrates this by a glacier. He felt that the right way to treat
psychological problems was to bring hidden inner conflicts in
to the patient's awareness (from unconscious to conscious).
The treatment simply starts by understanding the underlying
conflict. Through that, the patients might alleviate the
symptoms.

SIGMUND FREUD (1856 – 1939)

Freud was the first to use psychology as a way

of medical treatment (therapeutic method), because he had
experiences with mentally disturbed patients. Up to then,
most behaviour problems were labelled as “hysteria”, but
Freud focused on understanding the unconscious
motivations (i.e. basic sexual and aggressive instincts) that
caused mal-behaviour. His method
of psychoanalysis emphasizes the unconscious mind and
focuses on internal, unconscious mental processes, motives
and desires, and childhood conflicts. Freud used techniques
such as dream interpretation or free association to
search for inner conflicts that caused psychological problems.
He had a non-scientific perspective.
(Show more...)
Freud thought there were three components to our psyche:
Id, Ego and Super-ego.

 ID

 SUPEREGO

 EGO
 An example of an inner conflict: (Show more...)
Many times the cause of psychological problems is below
our level of consciousness. So we don't even know about the
conflict that's going on, but it is shaping our behaviour. Freud
illustrates this by a glacier. He felt that the right way to treat
psychological problems was to bring hidden inner conflicts in
to the patient's awareness (from unconscious to conscious).
The treatment simply starts by understanding the underlying
conflict. Through that, the patients might alleviate the
symptoms.

CARL JUNG (1875–1961)

In contrast to Freud, who traced much of adult

personality to the events of childhood, Jung stressed the
possibility of personality changes in adulthood, under the
influence of the goals people set. Jung believed that every
person has not only a conscious mind and a “personal
unconscious” (equivalent to Freud’s unconscious) but also
a collective unconscious that could influence many aspects
of personality. You could think of it as a “group mind.” The
personal unconscious results from each person’s own
experience. The collective unconscious, present at birth,
represents the cumulative experience of preceding
generations.

ALFRED ADLER (1870-1937)

Adler believed Freud overemphasized the sex drive and

neglected other influences. Adler founded a rival school of
thought, which he called individual psychology. To Adler
this term did not mean “psychology of the individual.” Rather,
it meant “indivisible psychology,” a psychology of the person
as a whole rather than a psychology of parts, such as id, ego,
and superego. Adler emphasized the importance
of conscious, goal-directed behaviour and deemphasized
(but did not deny) unconscious influences.

According to Adler everyone has a natural striving for

superiority, a desire to seek personal excellence and
fulfilment. As infants, Adler noted, we are small, dependent
creatures who strive to overcome our inferiority. Normal
experiences with failure motivate people to try harder.
However, persistent failures and excessive criticism can
produce an inferiority complex, an exaggerated feeling of
weakness, inadequacy, and helplessness.

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY

During the 1950s, humanistic psychology began as a

reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Humanistic
psychology emphasizes the inner self and the importance
of subjective feelings. Humanists believe people are
innately good and that mental and social problems result from
deviations from this natural tendency. Abraham
Maslow and Carl Rogers emphasized the
individual's phenomenology (subjective or personal view of
the world.), as well as a process called self-actualization.

According to humanistic psychologists, personality depends

on people’s beliefs and perceptions of the world. If you
believe that a particular experience was highly meaningful,
then it was highly meaningful. They reject the scientific goal
of predicting and controlling human behaviour. The major aim
should be to discover things that expand and enrich human
experience.
CARL ROGERS

Rogers (1980) regarded human nature as basically

good. He said people have a natural drive toward self-
actualization, the achievement of one’s full potential, which
is the basic drive behind the development of personality.

ABRAHAM MASLOW

Maslow complained that most psychologists concentrate

on disordered personalities, assuming that personality is
either normal or worse than normal. Maslow insisted that
personality can differ from normal in positive, desirable ways.
He proposed that people’s highest need is self-
actualization, the fulfilment of an individual’s potential.

Psychological methodology

In order to receive scientifically valid information based on

empirical evidence, psychology uses The Scientific Method.
Researchers use this 4-step process, which starts by:

 1) Problem definition

 2) Design of the study and Data collection

 3) Data analysis

 4) Publication of results

There are three main

methodologies: Descriptive, Correlational and Experimental,
which differ in the type of information they present.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
METHODS
Research methods

Psychological science is a mixture of observation,

measurement and experimentation on a wholly unique
subject: the human mind. Research methods help us to
understand the human mind, behaviour and processes.

Experiment

Psychological experiments are designed and controlled

scenarios that manipulate a variable to test a hypothesis or
answer a question.
Experiments are studies in which the investigator
manipulates one variable to determine its effect on another
variable. The manipulated variable is the independent
variable. Changes in the independent variable may lead to
changes in the dependent variable, the one the experimenter
measures

Survey (questionnaires and interviews)

A survey is a measure administered through either an

interview or a written questionnaire to get a picture of the
beliefs, attitudes or behaviors of a sample of people of
interest. The people chosen to participate in the research
(known as the sample) are selected to be representative of all
the people that the researcher wishes to know about (the
population).
Psychological development

Developmental psychologists study the biological, cognitive,

social and emotional changes that occur in people over time.

Infancy and Childhood

One of the most important events of early childhood is

forming one’s first attachments infants who develop one or
more good attachments have a sense of security and safety.
They can explore the world and return to their attachment
figure when frightened or distressed. Those who do not
develop strong early attachments may have trouble
developing close relations later as well.
An experiment called Strange Situation pioneered
by Mary Ainsworth (1979) tested attachment.

Childhood is also a time of Social Learning, we learn about

many behaviours before we try them. Much learning,
especially in humans, results from observing the behaviours
of others and from imagining the consequences of our own
behaviour. Imitating someone’s behaviour occurs
automatically during childhood. Albert Bandura (1963)
studied the role of imitation for learning aggressive behaviour

Social Development in Childhood and

Adolescence

Adolescence begins when the body reaches puberty, the

onset of sexual maturation. Adolescence merges into
adulthood, and adulthood is more a state of mind than a
condition of the body (some 30-year-olds act like
adolescents). Adolescence is sometimes seen as a period of
“storm and stress.” Typically, teenagers report increased
emotional intensity of their conflict with parents in early
adolescence, but decreased frequency of conflicts in later
adolescence.
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As Erikson pointed out, adolescence is a time of “finding
yourself,” determining “who am I?” or “who will I be?” It is
when most people first construct a coherent “life story” of
how they got to be the way they are and how one life event
led to another.
An adolescent’s concern with decisions about the future and
the quest for self-understanding has been called an identity
crisis. The term crisis implies more emotional turbulence
than is typical. Identity development has two major
elements: whether one is actively exploring the issue and
whether one has made any decisions.

Adulthood

From early adulthood until retirement, the main concern of

most adults is, as Erikson noted, “What will I achieve and
contribute to society and my family? Will I be successful?”
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During adulthood, behavior changes mostly because new
situations require people to assume new roles and change
their priorities of how they spend their time. After early
adulthood, according to Levinson (1986), people go through
a midlife transition (age 40 or 45), a time when they
reassess their personal goals, set new ones, and prepare for
the rest of life. Finally, people make the transition to late
adulthood, which begins around age 65.

Old Age
 People age in different ways. Some people, e.g. those with
Alzheimer’s disease, deteriorate rapidly in intellect,
coordination, and ability to care for themselves. However,
most people over 65 continue to work at full or part-time
jobs, or hobbies. Many remain active and alert well into their
80s/90s. On the average, memory declines, but the results
differ remarkably among individuals.

A man who has not found something he is willing to die for

is not fit to live.

ERIK ERIKSON’S SOCIAL VIEW OF
DEVELOPMENT
Erikson has a social view of development. He divided the
human life span into eight periods that he variously called
ages or stages. At each stage of life, he said, people have
specific tasks to master, and each stage generates its own
social and emotional conflicts. Erikson suggested that failure
to master the task of a particular stage meant unfortunate
consequences that would carry over to later stages.

Erikson’s 8 stages of development

IGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOSEXUAL VIEW OF
DEVELOPMENT
Sigmund Freud has a psychosexual view of development.
According to Freud psychosexual pleasure (i.e. all strong,
pleasant excitement arising from body stimulation) begins in
infancy and influences nearly all aspects of our personality.
People have a psychosexual energy, which he
called libido (lih - BEE- doh), from a Latin word meaning
“desire.” Normally, libido is focused in an infant’s mouth and
flows to other body parts as the child grows older. Children go
through five stages of psychosexual development, and each
leaves its mark on the adult personality. If normal sexual
development is blocked or frustrated at any stage, Freud said,
part of the libido becomes fixated at that stage, and the
person continues to be pre occupied with the pleasure area
associated with that stage.