What is Psychology?

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I just want to know What is Psychology. I need to write a paper about it, but I have no idea what it is. Thanks.

-- Priscilla Spindola (minabr99@aol.com), April 26, 2001

Answers

Response to Psychology

A broad question indeed. You may take clues from the followings:

Psychology continues to redefine itself http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec99/ss2.html

Cognitive psychology sees a return to power http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec99/ss7.html

-- Shirley (laosx@yahoo.com), April 26, 2001.


Response to Psychology

Most Introductory Psychology texts from the 1970s onward define Psychology as "the scientific study of behaviour, and those capacities and dispositions which make behaviour possible or likley to occur" (e.g. Introductory_Psychology, Brown & Cook, 1985). More generally, though, psychologists in the Western world have been concerned with the What, How, and Why of typical and atypical human experience, as indicated by the course titles in a typical undergraduate psychology program: "cognition", "emotion", "development", "physiological psychology", "psychopathology", etc. To discuss the subject matter of psychology, it might be most useful to give some thought to the questions that psychologists have tried to answer throughout the years. To help with that, you may want to look at some history of psychology texts (e.g. Readings in the History and Systems of Psychology by James F. Brennan, 1995: Prentice-Hall).

-- Mirisse Foroughe (mirisse@yorku.ca), April 27, 2001.

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