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From the ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul," "mind") and -λογία -ology ("study").

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior and the practical application of psychological therapy. Psychological research covers such concepts as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. The practical, medical application of psychological therapy is known as clinical psychology.

Early considerations on human cognition doubted the applicability of the scientific approach to the subject, but gradually, following from early physiological studies by the Italian physician Galvani, it became apparent that the physical science could be applicable to description of cognitive processes. Through the 20th century, great advancements from basic philosophical study to detailed examination of the human brain using the application of MRI and other modern scanning techniques have lead to a very detailed understanding of the underlying physical processes involved in the structure and operation of human cognition, however, a great deal remains unknown about the human brain, particularly in the areas of long-term memory storage and in a functional and predictive coherent picture of full brain functioning.

Psychology is a relatively new discipline, less than two centuries old, and may be seen by some as a bastion of liberalism and secularism, which may be rife with pseudoscience and quackery.[1][2] For example, an article published by the New York Times in late 2011 reports how only two third of Dutch psychologists release the data for their experiments. This naturally would raise some concern about the validity of the findings for these experiments[2]

In 2011, the New York Times reported:


Rosenhan experiment

The website Frontier Psychiatrist wrote:






See also: Ineffectivness of counseling psychology

The Christian group Teen Challenge reported:

St. Paul defends his preaching (Giovanni Ricco)

Teen Challenge has a number of studies that indicate the high effectiveness of their drug treatment program compared to other programs.[5] Studies indicate that consumers of secular counseling psychology for alcoholism receive hardly any benefit at all.[6][7] The Apostle Paul in a letter to the church of Corinth indicated that Christians were able to overcome being drunkards through the power of Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

The Apostle Paul wrote:





The website The Berean Call has a number of articles on various false claims and unbiblical notions that many practioners of counseling psychology promote.[10]

Effectiveness of laymen vs. trained psychologists






[accurate bible reference is needed here to support this argument or adequate referring to the interpretation of the Word, bringing to such conclusion]



Psychiatric quackery revealed by race often unnecessarily causing misdiagnosis

In 2005, The Washington Post reported:



Materialism in Psychology

From a materialist perspective, the most fundamental paradigm in psychology is the assumption that the human mind is a manifestation of the brain. This idea is in opposition to the traditional (religious) belief in the soul and hence psychology is rejected by many religions and cults, including some evangelical Christian denominations and also Scientology.

Unlike fields such as physics or biology that attempt to work towards a uniting frame or theory for all hypothesis generated, psychology has traditionally focused on defining different schools of thought with substantially different unifying principles and little effort is made to unite these different schools.

There is a primary division between clinical or applied psychology which focuses on helping people directly through various applications of theory and experimental or research oriented psychology which focuses on applying the scientific method to ascertain the foundations of thought and action.

Most meta-analysis of the field divides psychologist into 5 different paradigms:

  • Cognitive psychology- This school of thought has a strong focus on understanding the mechanisms of mind in order to explain behavior. It often uses analogies to computers to accomplish this task, one of its great themes is the idea of the Computational Theory of Mind.
  • Existential psychology and Humanistic psychology- While these schools of thought differ in some fundamental ways they are often linked together because of their focus on differences and the importance of the individual over generalized rules. Existential Psychology emerges from French Existential philosophy most notably linked to Jean-Paul Sartre. It places great importance on Existential angst as an inevitability of existence, and that the role of psychology is to help individuals recognize their angst and come to terms with it. Humanistic approaches to psychology are closely linked to the ideas of Abraham Maslow and his idea of the Hierarchy of Needs. To Maslow, psychological illness is a consequence of the difference between the idealized self and the actual self, the role of the psychologist is to help the person either adjust his idealized self image or improve his actual self. Carl Rogers' Client Centered Therapy is also closely linked to humanistic approaches.
  • Evolutionary psychology and Biological psychology- These approaches attempt to understand mind and behavior as products of biologic interactions and evolutionary history. This school of thought is heavily researched based. Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively recent development, and many of its proponents believe that a strongly biologic approach to psychology may ultimately serve as a unifying principle for the field of psychology.


For a more detailed treatment, see History of psychology.

Psychology is viewed as a relatively young discipline. It started with Wilhelm Wundt and "introspection", continued on with William James, and was later influenced by Charles Darwin and the Theory of evolution.

Sigmund Freud and his psychodynamics had an enormous influence on psychology which continues to this day, e.g., the concept of an unconscious mind being able to change and direct behavior. He also posited that people go through developmental stages in which their mind and behavior change as they grow up and grow old, an idea taken up by Jean Piaget.

Ivan Pavlov's work on classical conditioning was pivotal. It became combined with the concepts developed in functionalism and the field of behavioral psychology was born (see B.F. Skinner), and it was hoped that psychology could became a hard science like physics with mathematical rigor. Skinner also thought that all of human behavior was a function of conditioning and instrumental learning.

During the 1960s several developments altered the course of psychological research. Several experiments had begin turning up anomalous results. One of the most famous is the Garcia effect where an animal that is exposed to a novel food and then made sick instantly learns to no longer desire that food. Noam Chomsky showed that language acquisition follows seemingly innate rules. Thus cognitive psychology was born as a reaction against behaviorism. Cognitive psychologist attempted to understand the "black box" of the mind through computational analysis, modeling and rigorous experimentation. Psychology has continued to divorce itself from the strict empiricism of behaviouralism through the general endorsement of neuropsychological research. Neuropsychological research, typically conducted with fMRI scans, is not without controversy with prominent psychologists claiming that the interpretation of the data far outstrips its explanatory power. A similar complaint is often levelled against evolutionary psychology by prominent bioligists who note that most evolutionary interpretations of psychological phenomena are neccessarily post hoc and consequently untestable. It seems noteworthy that as psychology continues to grow and mature as a discipline it becomes increasingly mired in controversy.


Fields of Psychology

While embracing one or several (referred to as eclectic) of the paradigms listed earlier individual psychologist, psychiatrist and therapist can work in a range of sub-fields that deal with the total spectrum of human interactions. These include but are not limited to:

  • Health psychology/behavioral medicine focuses on the impact of psychological factors on behaviors that are relevant to physical health. Researchers in this field study topics such as substance abuse, obesity, and exercise.
  • Social psychology is the study of social behavior or interpersonal interactions. Social psychologists study issues such as the way in which attitudes towards other people are formed, or the effect that our perceptions of another person's behavior have on our interactions with that person.

External links

Research in Psychology


  1. Psychology is not science
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Fraud Case Seen as a Red Flag for Psychology Research