Psychology

Introduction

Psychology

Psychology is the discipline that investigates the mental processes of humans and animals. The word comes from the Greek: psychological (mental activity or soul) and-logy (study). This discipline analyzes the three dimensions of these processes: cognitive, affective and behavioral.

Modern psychology has been commissioned to gather facts about the behavior and experiences of living things, arranging them in a systematic and theories developed for understanding. These studies help explain their behavior and even in some cases, predict their future actions. To those people who develop the study of psychology are called psychologists. This means, those who analyze the behavior of living things from a scientific approach. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Jean Piaget are regarded as some of the pioneering psychologists.

Psychology in US

In 1913, the United States, John Watson (1878 - 1958), gave birth to a new psychological school, called behaviorism, through the publication of a famous article entitled "The psychology considered from the point of view of behavioral". Behaviorism, also known as behaviorism, will dominate the international scene for nearly fifty years, that is, throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

The Gestalt psychology was a current psychological born and developed in the early twentieth century in Germany, continuing its articulation in the United States. Although the personal lives of its major representatives (many left Germany after the rise of Nazism) brought this theory to a spread in U.S.

Psychology, as already mentioned, was born and developed initially in Europe, especially in Germany, thanks to the Leipzig laboratory and Gestalt psychology. Soon, however, it arrived and also spread in the United States. This happened largely thanks to two personalities: the Americans Edward Titchener (1867 - 1927) and William James (1842 - 1910). The first was a student of Wundt who, after studying at his laboratory, he returned home and translated the work of the master, thus spreading the psychology of the New World. Titchener also founded a new school of psychology, the structuralism, which was however short-lived.

William James was an American physician and philosopher interested in the psychological aspects of man. Held the first course in psychology (Harvard) entitled the relationship between physiology and psychology. In 1890 he published "Principles of Psychology", a manual which was very successful, even among readers. Like his colleague, James founded a new school of psychology, functionalism, structuralism, which was opposed by Titchener.

Stigma

Stigma refers to a process in the course within a society (certain external characteristics of individuals and groups, for example colored skin or a visible disability disabled), topped with negative reviews and the victims as "people of color", or "the physically disabled "in a marginalized position are pushed. Stigmatized persons are thus in social interactions perceived primarily negative connotations about this feature, other features, such as the nature or level of education can not compensate for the stigma.

A stigmatized human being is this process usually helpless and will internalize the negative valuation ascribed usually gradual. This has the consequence that the person experiences himself as deficient and, for example, tried to conceal the negative-valued feature.

According to Goffman, stigma is divided into three categories (Goffman, pp 41-42):

Tribal: ethnicity, religion.

Physical deformities: obesity, disabilities.

Individual stigmas associated with behavior or personality: juvenile delinquency, homosexuality.

Furthermore, Jones focused on identifying different dimensions that make social interaction with the setting stigmatized 6 dimensions (Jones, pp. 24-79):

Visibility.

It refers to the degree to which the stigma can be hidden

Evolution

Stability / Instability of stigma.

Aesthetic quality.

It stigmatizes the person who does not comply with the canon of ...