Essay, Research Paper: What Is Psychology

What is Psychology?
After taking Psychology 101, psychology means much more to me than it sit prior to taking the class. At the beginning of the semester, I was asked to define the word psychology, and the best definition I could muster was simply the study of the mind and how it works. After examining the large realm of the science of psychology I now realize that this definition was quite imcomplete. My itinial definition simply covered the branch of psychology known as cognitive psychology, and this is only one of many areas that are acutally included under the title psychology. Many psychologists focus on more quantitative aspects than the function of the human mind. There are several different areas that are more easily researched than that of the brain's functionality. An example would be behavioral psychology in which that o the brain's fuctionailty. An example would be behavioral psychology in shich the focus is put on observing behavior rather than on the processes going on inside the brain that invoke the subject's behavior. This is just one of the many esample that illustrate this point, and that maked developing a working definition of the term psychology extremely difficult to attain. The range of topics that are considered psychology is very suprising to a newcomer in the field. Everthing from determining which part are responsible for controlling certain senses to analyzing the influence of society on behavior and development is considered "psychology". Soi it is obvious that my original definition was extreme.l,y limited, but it have now been vastly broadened. In additon to recognizing the broad rage of topics that psycholo9gy covers, I also realized that ther is large nuimber of different occupations a person trained in psychology can hold. My original idea was taht a psychologitst was a person who dealtonly with psychoanalysis, and I would imagine that this is a common misconception. the possible careeer fields for a psychologitts is much greater than I had imagined it to be, it includes everthing from school counselors to psychiatrists to sensaiton and percetption researchers. Each different area of psychology has many differences from all of the other areas, but the orgins of these areas enables them all to fall under the incredibly large toipic of psychology. Alothough psychology is a very large topic this immense field is till relativelyt young and has many unopened doors. So not only is the science much larger than I originally thought, but it is still gorwing and the possibility of making new discoveries is still bvery open to future psychologist. After taking this class, I have realized that through out the years much has been learned about psychology, and much more is yet to be learned.