Draft of Psychology Paper
5-14-09


For decades, even centuries now, psychology has been seen as a nuisance, and hasn’t been considered a science. Most people feel that way towards it, basing their reasoning on how you aren’t able to confirm people’s thoughts and feelings with hard facts. Even though there are people who believe it is a science, that are very few who believe so. Even some of the psychologists out there don’t think it a science, but work with it anyway. So how can you prove either one?


It’s true that psychology isn’t one for facts, besides what people are reluctant to approve of. So this bullet point doesn’t really help the cause, but it proves that it can have studies of its own. One study that was taken had 878 employees, half of which were smokers, and promised money if they stayed away from cigarettes. Sure enough, 5.8 percent more were able to quit with the help of incentives. You see, everything we think, feel, do, etc., is all part of the functioning of the mind.


Psychologists are able to look for cause and effect behavior to determine relationships, so it helps to see what lengths should be taken to help others.
Another study took 40 people and placed them in a room with a telephone; they were to listen to the message left on there and were given paper to draw and color on while listening. The ones who doodled remembered 29 percent more than those who actually listened. The theory was that doodling helped absorb information instead of doodling from a wandering mind.

Again, another study shows that it’s possible to train the mind to help train the body. If you were to visualize about anything pertaining to weight-lifting, it’s better than nothing, and from the mind’s eye, specific visualization plus dedication can get you where you want to go, and fast. Researchers had four groups of athletes participate in the study. Group 1 was completely physical, group two was ¾ physical, three was 50-50 and four was 100 percent visualization. The results astounded the researchers: leading to the games they had planned for the athletes after testing to see which one worked best, the fourth group had the most successes.  


Let’s get into the fields of psychology; the studies are interesting, but there’s too many of them. The first field is Gestalt psychology founded in 1912 by Max Wertheimer. In the 1930’s, Max and two other colleagues brought their ideas to the U.S. It was considered a rebellion against structuralism, seeing as how that was the main focus in the time period. It’s like a mix of behaviorism and structuralism, the study of behavior and the study of the content of the conscious mind. Its main idea is that humans and animals see the world as some kind of pattern and studied that way.


Gestalt psychology was used to create many principles of psychology. For example, the Closure principle believes that people will tend to see incomplete patterns as combines wholes. Like, say a circle cut into pieces, or fragmented, would appear whole. Or the Figure Ground Perception principle states that people will see figures against backgrounds, such as pictures in walls and words on a page. Gestalt psychology is now considered a school of its own and influence psychologists who study perception and human experience.


Alright, the next field is Psychoanalysis. This was founded in the 1800’s and early 1900’s by Sigmund Freud. His theory was that behaviors are determined by the unconscious mind. He had several theories on the mind, behavior and treatment. On the mind, he had it set up into three parts: The ID, the Ego, and the Superego. He found that people are born with instincts that differ from person to person, and the ID fuels this. The ego resolves conflicts between instincts and reality. The Superego is the person’s conscience. The ideas and morals learned in childhood from teachers, parents, friends, etc, become a person’s Superego.
Freud saw that many of his patients behaved according to experiences they weren’t consciously aware of. He then, after a whole lot of observations, concluded that the unconscious plays a big role in shaping a person. He also came to the conclusion that states the unconscious is full of memories from childhood. He noted that if the memories were somehow painful, people unknowingly pushed them out of their minds. In other words, the unconscious forgot them.


He believed that his patients used a large amount of energy to do so. Tying up a person’s energy is harmful, he thought, keeping someone from a productive life and can lead to a disease he called neurosis. In an abuse case, he concluded that past reflections could lead to a mental illness in adulthood.  


Freud used Free Association to diagnose his patients. How that work is he would try to help the person relax so he or she would talk about whatever was troubling them, or what was on the brain at the time. He then could look for clues about the person’s inner-most emotions, thinking he could hear something that mirrors the subconscious. The goal of it was to help the person accept and live with the feelings. At first, he copied an Austrian psychologist named Josef Breuer on treatment. What he used was hypnotic techniques before he modified and created his own.  


Psychology has come a long way in all of its years. Several fields have been founded and many schools/principles have been created. In fact, the next field has five subgroups. Five! Just the ones I’ve pointed out aren’t all of them.
Like I said, Modern Psychology has five subgroups: Humanistic, Cognitive School, Neuroscience, Behavioral Geneticists and Sociocultural Perspective, according to World Book Online Reference Center. Many psychologists disagree with Freud’s studies and theories, but they do agree that the subconscious plays a vital role in a person’s personality and behavior. The same is true of psychologists with behaviorists: they study the actions of those around them.
     

The first one is Humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychologists see the “Self” as the main focus. The builders of the area are Abe H. Maslow, Carl. R. Rogers and Rollo May. It developed mainly between the reaction of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, which emphasize the importance of values, intentions, and meanings that involve the person.


They use a variety of therapies, seven to be accurate, all of which contain huge ginormous words and really big definitions. In any case, the therapies are sensory awareness, existential analysis, Gestalt therapy, logo therapy certain transpersonal human potential, holistic health, and addition recovery schools.
Cognitive School is the next topic. It is the psychological belief that there is more to human nature than “Stimulus Response” connections. They focus on mental processes such as thinking reasoning and self-awareness. They work to investigate how a person gathers information too. They watch how the person processes it and how responses are planned.


Neuroscience is next on the list. These specialists study how processes in the brain and nervous system coincide with individual experiences that go along with thoughts, emotions and senses. Behavioral geneticists are a branch of that; looking for links between genes and behavior to determine personality before birth. They try to predict whether a person, for example, is more optimistic or pessimistic depending on the parents.


Sociocultual perspective (Isn’t that a mouthful!) recognize the role of social and cultural environment on behavior. The people who work in this area see themselves as a subject to cultural and historical context as well.
And last but certainly not least is eclecticism. This field is where psychologists don’t associate themselves with theories or schools. They select and use what appears best from a wider variety of sources.
So to conclude, psychology is a wide field with a lot of branches and subgroups. Some main areas evolved from a small sub-category. Great people were celebrated for their finds, and others are shunned by some. Therapies were created in order to help people, and so on. Some fields don’t even help the cause on whether it’s a science! But otherwise, psychology is very interesting; I learned a lot.