SPECIAL FIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Physiological psychology
3. Psychoanalysis
4. Behaviourism
5. Gestalt psychology
6 .Cognition
7. Tests and Measurements
8. Development psychology
9. Social psychology
10. Psychiatry and mental health
11. Forensic psychology and criminology
12. Psychology, religion and phenomenology
13. Parapsychology
Industrial Psychology
Vocabulary
Literature
1.Introduction
Psychology, scientific study of behavior and experience—that is, the study of how human beings and animals sense, think, learn, and know. Modern psychology is devoted to collecting facts about behavior and experience and systematically organizing such facts into psychological theories. These theories aid in understanding and explaining people’s behavior and sometimes in predicting and influencing their future behavior.
Psychology, historically, has been divided into many subfields of study; these fields, however, are interrelated and frequently overlap. Physiological psychologists, for instance, study the functioning of the brain and the nervous system, and experimental psychologists devise tests and conduct research to discover how people learn and remember. Subfields of psychology may also be described in terms of areas of application. Social psychologists, for example, are interested in the ways in which people influence one another and the way they act in groups. Industrial psychologists study the behavior of people at work and the effects of the work environment. School psychologists help students make educational and career decisions. Clinical psychologists assist those who have problems in daily life or who are mentally ill.
History. The science of psychology developed from many diverse sources, but its origins as a science may be traced to ancient Greece.
Philosophical Beginnings. Plato and Aristotle, as well as other Greek philosophers, took up some of the basic questions of psychology that are still under study: Are people born with certain skills, abilities, and personality, or do all these develop as a result of experience? How do people come to know the world? Are certain ideas and feelings innate, or are they all learned?
Such questions were debated for many centuries, but the roots of modern psychological theory are found in the 17th century in the works of the French philosopher Ren Descartes and the British philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Descartes argued that the bodies of people are like clockwork machines, but that their minds (or souls) are separate and unique. He maintained that minds have certain inborn, or innate, ideas and that these ideas are crucial in organizing people’s experiencing of the world. Hobbes and Locke, on the other hand, stressed the role of experience as the source of human knowledge. Locke believed that all information about the physical world comes through the senses and that all correct ideas can be traced to the sensory information on which they are based.