What Psychology is to MeAfter taking Psychology 1000, psychology means much more to me than itdid prior to taking the class.
At the beginning of the semester, I was asked todefine the word psychology, and the best definition I could muster was simplythe study of the mind and how it works. After examining the large realm of thescience of psychology I now realize that this definition was quite incomplete. My initial definition simply covered the branch of psychology known ascognitive psychology, and this is only one of many areas that are actuallyincluded under the title psychology. Many psychologists focus on morequantitative aspects than the function of the human mind. There are severaldifferent areas that are more easily researched than that of the brain’sfunctionality.
An example would be behavioral psychology in which the focus isput on observing behavior rather than on the processes going on inside thebrain that invoke the subject’s behavior. This is just one of the many examplesthat illustrate this point, and that makes developing a working definition ofthe term psychology extremely difficult to attain. The range of topics that are considered psychology is very surprising toa newcomer in the field. Everything from determining which parts of the brainare responsible for controlling certain senses to analyzing the influence ofsociety on behavior and development is considered psychology. So it isobvious that my original definition was extremely limited, but it has now beenvastly broadened.
In addition to recognizing the broad range of topics that psychologycovers, I also realized that there is large number of different occupations aperson trained in psychology can hold. My original idea was that a psychologistwas a person who dealt only with psychoanalysis, and I would imagine that thisis a common misconception. The possible career fields for a psychologist ismuch greater than I had imagined it to be, it includes everything from schoolcounselors to psychiatrists to sensation and perception researchers. Each different area of psychology has many differences from all of theother areas, but the origins of these areas enables them all to fall under theincredibly large topic of psychology. Although psychology is a very large topicthis immense field is still relatively young and has many unopened doors. Sonot only is the science much larger than I originally thought, but it is stillgrowing and the possibility of making new discoveries is still very open tofuture psychologists.
After taking this class, I have realized that through outthe years much has been learned about psychology, and much more is yet to belearned. Social Issues
