What is a Psychology?
Psychology is that the scientific study of the mind and behavior Sciencece may be a multifarious discipline and includes several sub-fields of studying such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical, social behavior and psychological feature processes.
Psychology is really a very new sciences, with most advances happened over the past 150 years or so. However, its origins can is traced back to ancient Greece, 400 – 500 years BC. The emphasis was a philosophical one, with great thinkers such as Socrates influencing Plato, who in turn influenced Aristotle.
Philosophers used to discuss many topics now studied by modern psychology, such as memory, free will, attraction etc.
In the early days of psychology there were two dominant theoretical perspectives. An American psychologist named William James (1842-1910) developed an approach which came to be known as functionalism. He argued that the mind is constantly changing and it is pointless to look for the building blocks of experience.
Instead, focus should be on how and why an organism does something. It was suggested that psychologists should look for the underlying cause of behavior and the mental the processes involved. This emphasis on the causes and consequences of behavior has influenced contemporary psychology.
Structuralism was the name given to the approach pioneered by Wilhelm Wundt. The term originated from Edward Titchener, an American psychologist who had been trained by ...