INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
Many people do equate psychological discipline with the magical art of predicting and interpreting human thoughts and feelings. Thus, when they see a psychologist they mistakenly believe that he is a magician who can tell them with exactness several things running through their minds. This is farther from the truth and reality. A psychologist is neither a magician nor a soothsayer. Rather, he is a scientist just like an anthropologist, sociologist, an economist, a geographer and a political scientist.
DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY
The term psychology is derived from two Greek words: Psuke and logos. Psuke refers to psyche"(i.e. mind) while logos implies "the study of" In this ordinary sense, psychology is simply the study of mind. By extension, it is the study of mental life and consciousness.
In modern times, psychology is technically defined as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes or activities of thinking, preserving, feeling etc.
In other words, it is concerned with how human beings feel, think, get along with others, adjust to the environment or become the individual that they are. Psychology tells us how physical and mental conditions of human being and their environment affect their behavior and vice versa.
It concentrates not just on the behavioral disposition of human beings, but also of the animals.
To this extent, a psychologist asks the following questions among others.
1. How do we see, hear, smell, or taste?
2. How do we forget?
3. What activities differentiate man from animal?
4. How does the mind affect the body and vice versa?
5. What causes mental illness and how can it be cured?
6. How does our
behavior influence the society and vice versa?
GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY
The goals of psychology
are to describe, to understand, predict and to control or modify or influence
behavior and mental processes. In a logical sequence, we should be able to
describe behavior or mental processes accurately before we understand them.
Clear understanding also enable us make prediction confidently. It is after
then that we are able to control, modify or influence the needed behavior.
SOME BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Broadly speaking, psychological discipline is divisible into the under-listed branches, among others:
1. Experimental Psychology: This mainly employs experimental methods to investigate human and animal behaviors. This concerns itself with research using the scientific approach to provide understanding to such phenomena as motivation, perception, sensation, and earning process in human and lower animals.
2. Developmental Psychology: It focuses principally on child development from infancy into adulthood. It focuses on changes in behavior and behavior potential over the life span.
3. Forensic Psychology: It applies psychological methods and principles to the investigation and detection of crime.
4. Clinical Psychology: It is concerned with emotional and mental disorders. It is the branch of psychology which specializes in the study of abnormal behavior in order to understand, diagnose and treat psychological disorder and pathology.
5. Counselling Psychology: It renders advisory services on human problems that are not mentally related. The expert helps in area of personnel, vocational, educational problems of learners.
6. Educational Psychology: It applies psychological ideas to enhance learning. It concerns itself with the study of the ways in which the learner can be most effectively brought into successful interaction with the materials to be learnt, the learning situation and the teachers who provide the learning opportunities.
7. Social psychology: It deals with interpersonal behaviors. It applies a variety of scientist methods to analyst, interpret and predict human behavior in contest of other persons, playmates and social companions.
8. Biopsychology
Psychology: This deals with psychological processes, which provide
an understanding of the influence of biological process like heredity, drug and
the nervous system on behavior.
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