What is psychology?
When I first thought about studying the subject, I didn’t even know the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Life experience has taught me that there is no such thing as a silly question. If I am wondering, someone else probably is too. So, a psychiatrist is a medically trained doctor who has gone on to specialise in mental heal and psychiatric conditions. Psychiatrists can diagnose and treat a range of serious psychiatric conditions such as paranoia, psychosis, schizophrenia, personality disorders and so on.
Psychologists do not have a medical degree, they have a philosophical, or thinking, degree. The primary difference is that psychiatrists can prescribe medication for psychiatric conditions and psychologists can’t. Psychologists provide talking therapies for people and study a range of behaviours. Psychologists can also be involved in researching the various aspects of the brain and behaviour.
Let’s begin with a definition of psychology: Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context.
Psychology is a wide area of studies. It encompasses a wide range of studies relevant to many aspects of our day to day life. Psychologists want to seek to understand what influences our behaviour, what drives our behaviour. We want to understand how things like medications, drugs, or brain injuries can change the ways we behave in society. Psychology can help to explore, understand and fix, many of the problems that we face in society today.
You may very well have thought of a psychologist as a counsellor. One which you go to when you are having mental health difficulties such as anxiety, stress or depression and you want to resolve those psychological issues. Although that is one of the areas within psychology, it is much more wide-ranging.
Whilst that is one area that psychologists operate in, it is much wider-ranging than that. Psychologists seek to understand the thoughts, emotions, and mental processes that we have. The overall aim of psychology is to seek to understand thoughts, feeling, emotion, the motivations, and the biology and mechanisms behind those processes. We do this though varies studies, through observation, through testing and measuring. We do this through various types of studies that involve observation, by testing and measuring differences in behaviour. We form reliable and statistically tested studies to prove or disprove certain aspects of psychology.
Different areas within psychology.
Clinical psychology. People seek the help of clinical psychologists to help with things such as traumatic childhood events. To deal with trauma, to deal with bereavement. To help to prevent alleviate or change things such as depression, anxiety, and stress. They do this through talking therapies that are designed to change the way we think about the word or ourselves and others. Cognitive behavioural therapy seeks to change our thinking patterns and deal with everyday problems in life, or how to handle stress or anxiety better. They offer one to one and group counselling sessions to deal with a variety of things such as depression, addiction, pain management and so on.
Biopsychology. This area of psychology is concerned with the brain and neurotransmitters. Bio psychologists work to discover the various ways in which neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters all work in combination to affect our behaviour, to affect our memory, to affect various sections of our brain. They aim to discover how these changes affect our behaviour.
Educational psychology. This is a wide area of study and it is widely applied within the educational system. Unsurprisingly, educational psychology examines the ways in which we learn and how we develop. Educational psychologists will often work in schools and they help when they have developmental difficulties or learning difficulties or struggle in a social setting with various mental health disorders and difficulties. The aim of an educational psychologist is to support children, young people, their families and schools to promote the emotional and social wellbeing of young people.
Cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology examines how we perceive the world and how we interact with our surroundings and the thoughts and processes that underlie those actions. It studies mental processes such as thoughts, memory, problem-solving, language and so on. Cognitive psychology studies the mind as an information processor.
Criminal or forensic psychology. (Also known as legal psychology.) This area of study applies psychological principles to all areas of law enforcement and the judicial system. There is also an area known as investigative psychology. This is concerned with applying established psychological principles to aspects of crime and criminal behaviour and seeks to improve the practices of the police, the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs that are delivered both inside prisons and in the community. The terms criminal psychology and forensic psychology are often used interchangeably as though they are the same thing. However, there is a slightly different focus for each.
Social psychology. This area focuses on how we behave in social settings such as in our communities and neighbourhoods. How we behave in large shopping centres. How we interact with others that we know or those that we don’t know. It also looks at behaviours such as how we form groups. How leaders are created are formed and evolve. It explores the various ways that we can have an influence or impact on each other.
Industrial or Occupational psychology. Unsurprisingly, this deals with work-related psychology. It deals with aspects such as the hiring process, which candidates might be suitable for particular roles within a business. They may lead behavioural change programs or courses on problem-solving. They may design and run conflict resolution courses. Overall, occupational psychologists aim to increase the effectiveness of the organisation and improve the job satisfaction of individuals. The speciality is broader in scope and less formalised than many areas of psychology and it covers diverse fields, including ergonomics, personnel management and time management.
There are many other smaller areas within psychology and it would be impossible for me to cover them all here. There are areas such as sports psychology which seek to improve the performance of athletes. There is an area of psychology that covers every area of life. There is the psychology of music. Every advert or poster that you see is based on what we know about psychology and behaviour.
Some psychologists are involved in helping people with addictions. They seek to help people by teaching them how to change their patterns of behaviour through courses such as cognitive behavioural therapy.
There is also an area of psychology that studies the ways in which we use medications or how various medications can influence us. These are not just drugs for various mental health conditions, but drugs that we may become addicted to or dependant on, for example, pain killers. We need to know how various compounds affect us psychologically so that warning labels can be put on prescription medications.
These areas of study are not an exhaustive list, but they do give you some idea of how diverse the study of psychology is. Although it is diverse, all areas of psychology are about examining our mind, thought processes and behaviour. Psychology helps us to understand the ways in which we learn and the ways in which we interact.
