What is Psychology?

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes

Seeks to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior and mental processes

Committed to a belief in the dignity of human beings

It is a study of the influences on human behavior

This means: research, practice and teaching

The Fields in Psychology Experimental Psychologists

Clinical Psychologists Health Psychologists

School Psychologists Sports Psychologists

Developmental Psychologists Forensic Psychologist

Environmental Psychologists Industrial Psychologists

The history of Psychology is rooted in the story of human philosophy.

470-399 BCE SOCRATES

Suggested that a research method called INTROSPECTION, that is still used in Psychology today.

It is based on his advice: “To know thyself”

ARISTOTLE

Argued that science could rationally treat only information gathered by the senses

He numbered the so-called five senses

He explored the nature of cause and effect

He pointed out that people differ from other living things in their capacity for rational thought

He outlined laws of association that have lain at the heart of learning theory for more than 2000 years

He declared that people are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Structuralism

school of psychology that attempted to break down conscious experience into objective sensations such
as sight, taste, subjective feelings, emotional responses, will, mental images like memories and dreams
That the mind functions by combining objective and subjective elements of experience

ASK: What are the pieces that make up thinking?

William James and Fuctionalism

End of 19th century

Major figure in Psychology in the U.S

Influenced by DARWIN’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Functionalism

Focused on behavior in addition to the mind or consciousness

Looked at how experiences help us function more adaptively in our environment

ASK: How do behavior and mental processes help people adapt to the requirements of their lives?

BEHAVIORISM

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958)

If psychology was to be a natural science, like physics and chemistry, it must limit itself to OBSERVABLE,
MEASURABLE EVENTS  BEHAVIOR

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) and the power of Reinforcement

Positive and negative reinforcement influences behavior

Experimented on animalS

School of psychology that focuses on learning observable behavior (heart rate, blood pressure,
movement, etc,)

Gestalt Psychology

3 founders:

Max Werthiemer (1880-1943)

Kurt Koffka (1886-1941)

Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967)

Focused on perception and how it influences thinking and problem solving

German word: “pattern” or “organized whole”

Argue: We cannot understand human nature by focusing on behavior alone, nor can we explain human
perception in terms of basic units. Perceptions are more than the sum of its parts

That we tend to perceive separate pieces as integrated wholes

Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

(1856-1939)

The school of psychology that emphasizes the importance of the unconscious motives and conflicts as
determinants of human behaviour.

The Beauty of the Brain

Somatic NS

-movement and sensation

-Afferent Nerves

Sensory neurons

Transmit from brain to spinal cord

-Efferent Nerves

Motor neurons

Brain and spinal cord to muscles

Autonomic NS

Sympathetic division

Most active during activities that expand energy

Parasympathetic division

Generally to replenish energy stores

What is consciousness?

Your awareness of everything that is going on around you and everything going on inside your head at
any given moment, which you use to organize your behavior, thoughts and feelings

WAKING Consciousness

Altered States of Consciousness

sleep

coma statealertness  Manic state

What is sleep?

Interpretation of Dreams (1900) by Sigmund Freud

A dream experience is a conscious expression of unconscious fantasies or wishes not readily acceptable
to conscious waking experience

Components of a Dream

Dream Content

MANIFEST CONTENT

What is recalled by the dreamer

LATENT CONTENT

Unconscious thoughts and wishes that threaten to awaken the dreamer

Dream image

Represents unconscious wishes or thoughts disguised through a process of symbolization and other
distorted mechanisms

Dream Work

The reworking of unconscious contents

The unconscious mental operation by which latent dream content is transformed into the manifest
dream

A Censor
Guards the border of the conscious and the preconscious

Functions to exclude unconscious wishes during conscious states

during sleep, it allows for certain unconscious contents to pass through after transforming these into
disguised forms experienced In the manifest dream content

An ego function of self preservation

Ingredients of a Dream

Nocturnal Sensory Stimuli

The Day Residue

Repressed unacceptable impulses

Condensation- The mechanism by which several unconscious wishes, impulses, or attitudes can be
combined into a single image in the manifest dream

Symbolic representation-Representation of highly charged ideas or objects with innocent or neutral

images that are connected to the original idea

Abstract concepts or complex feelings can be symbolized by simple, concrete sensory image

Symbols have unconscious meanings discerned through the person’s associations to the symbol.

Anxiety dreams