EMERGENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY

Emergence of Psychology



Emergence of Psychology

Emergence of Psychology

In earliest times, basic forms of psychology were practiced by priests, shamans, wizards, seers, medicine men, sorcerers, and enchanters, all of whom offered some blend of magic, religion, and herbal remedies to ease the physical and mental suffering of their patients. These early efforts evolved into the current fields of medicine, religion, and psychology, with a residual overlap of influence among the three. Psychology continued its gradual evolution until the 19th century, one that saw significant changes in this field (Suen, 2007, 25).

Psychology emerged as a separate discipline in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychological laboratory. Wundt was a German psychologist, generally recognised as the founder of scientific psychology as an independent discipline. Wundt promoted what is known as structural and content of psychology, which emphasises the observations of the conscious mind rather than inference. Conducted the study published in perception, feeling and apperception.

Moreover, the field of psychology addresses phenomena in nearly all areas of human (and animal) life. Though psychology is not unique in its breadth of study (compare, for example, the equally numerous, and frequently overlapping, realms claimed by sociology), its ubiquity speaks to the power that psychological explanations hold in contemporary western, and increasingly, global societies. Central areas of psychological research regularly detailed in introductions to the field include: biology and neurophysiology, psychopharmacology, sensation, perception, cognition, memory, learning, consciousness, emotion, motivation, intelligence, language, personality, childhood development, abnormal behaviour, interpersonal relations, sexuality, psychotherapy, industrial relations, and forensics. To each of these areas psychology applies its unique focus on individual, largely internal processes, theorised and legitimised through an experimental method (Reiss, 2006, 33).

Broadly, psychologists divide their work into pure and applied fields. Pure researchers have adopted the investigative methods of the natural sciences (i.e., positivist empiricism and variants) to study the fundamental processes that are said to undergird human behaviour.

Historically, psychology has been divided into several subfields. Some of which overlap each other with theories and interrelated. secondary fields (also known as "areas of application ~ ') of psychology are: Physiological psychologists study how the brain and nervous system, experimental psychologists to design tests and conduct research to discover how people learn and remember. Industrial psychologists study the behaviour of people at work and the effect the work environment has on them. School psychologists help students make career decisions and educational decisions. Social psychologists are interested in the ways they influence each other and how to act within a group of clinical psychologists and help people with mental illness or who have problems in everyday life (Patton, 2006, 12).

While philosophy provided a number of conceptual schemes for psychological investigation, experimental physiology provided the laboratory method that became synonymous with scientific psychology. In particular, the field of psychophysics (which continues to be a vibrant area of psychological research) developed methods to measure the relationship between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli.

2. Approaches to Psychology

(a): Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytical Approach

Psychodynamic psychotherapy utilises the constructs that inform psychoanalysis proper, but clients ...