The Basics of Psychology
- Medicine Community & Research
- Sep 2
- 7 min read
Written By Cyra Zareen
Texas Chapter, MCR
What Should We Know
What is Psychology in the first place? We can all answer that, study of mental behaviors, but I find the broken down version of the word a bit more interesting. The prefix is psyche, which comes from the Greek word psykhe, which in its most literal translation means: soul. While, the suffix, ology, just means: the study of. The whole literal translation of this would be: Study of the Soul. Ironic? Isn’t it? That the word with the most spiritual definiton, always focuses on the brain for its first chapter. Why do we do this? Well for starters, the human brain is the only thing that offers us a chance of understanding why humans act the way they do. It's where our cognitive functions lie and also where we find the means to understand how our emotions form. Now in all classes regarding any medical field, we would find the anatomy of the brain posted somewhere, so look to your left.
The Brainstem: Is where your basic, day to day functions lie. Breathing and Digestion being the most notable of them all.
The Cerebellum: Has a vast range of what it helps you with. Some examples are motor control, language, posture, and the regulation of emotions.
The Cerebrum: This is the largest part of the brain. Like the Cerebellum it focuses on motor control and language, but it differs in the kinds. With the Cerebrum being the reason why we can voluntarily move and it contains the Pareital Lobe which is heavily concerned in the production of language. It also deals with the 5 senses, so next time you smell your mom’s special apple pie, thank your Cerebrum!
The brain is our one major building block due to how imperative it is to any field, especially psychology, which has only sprouted due to the want and need of figuring out the why of people. Why do you react a certain way? Why do you do certain things? That’s why the brain is always introduced.
Special People that shaped this field!
Psychology has always been a thing. Even dating as far back to the Ancient Egyptians, where Pharohs and hierogylphics reigned supreme. They conducted experiments regarding this field of study. With how far back psychology goes, don’t we owe it to have an extensive run-down of its history? Some notable figures that appear throughout psychology are: Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud, Mary Whiton Calkins, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Carl Rogers, Erik Erison, B.F. Skinner, Aaron Beck, and Albert Bandura. All of these people have contributed to modern psychology in some shape or form.
We all know Sigmund Freud as the man who created talk therapy and the “father” of psychoanalytic psychology. Yet what did he exactly do? He’s the one who discovered the Oedipus Complex, which is named after a Greek myth of a prince named Oedipus who fulfills a prophecy to kill his father and marry his mother. It's very self-explanatory why Freud named it as he did. He often turned to myths to help his claims or theories. He had also proposed that the human mind was divided into 3 pieces: Ego, Id, and Super-Ego. (If not evident, it seems his names are mostly on the nose.) With Id being the base impulses of the mind, seeking pleasure only. Super-Ego is where your morals lie, your practicality and pragmatism. Ego is the middle ground, it's the mediator, it is the one we see most in our actions. Sigmund Freud has left an amazing legacy (also one of being sexist and yet also theorizing about psychosexual development, especially in relation to women in an attempt to reinforce strict gender roles) and is a man we owe thanks to for broadening horizons for modern psychology.
We have to also talk about Wilhelm Freud, who is the father of experimental psychology, and is the one largely regarded for helping make it a separate science. He developed multiple theories such as the Apperception Theory, and the Theory of Emotions. He also heavily contributed to both cultural and neuropsychology.
Mary Whiton Calkins was the 2nd woman to fulfill the requirements of a PHD and not getting rewarded with one because Harvard (and society) at the time was uncomfortable to give women rights to a fair education on par with a man. She developed the technique of paired association when it comes to memory, which is essentially, a technique where you associate a memory with something. Such as when studying for a history test you might associate the American Revolution with George Washington, or in my case, dumping a lot of tea.
Kurt Lewin is the father of social psychology, one of the first to study group dynamics, working in terms of improvement in social settings, such as the Force-Field analysis. He also developed the Change Process, which is him breaking down what is needed to change into 3 stages: Unfreezing, Change, Freezing. This process was never formally completed but it still holds its weight in the field today. He also helped with social issues such as racism and religous prejudice due to his Sensititvity Training.
Jean Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist known for his theory on cognitive development in children and just his entire specilization in children. He also was a huge advocate for child rights such as access to education. His theory for cognitive development was one where the adolescence stage was heavily emphasized and it was divided into 4 stages: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. Each is divided into age groups, with the first one being 0-2, which is where infants learn their basic motors and gain awareness, the second stage being 2-7, where they learn how to speak and understand basic concepts. The third stage is for 7-11 year olds where they start learning how to think theoretically, and is also where critical thinking comes into play and then we have the fourth where it is just tweens and up, where they have learnt how to think for themselves and can develop complex thoughts on matters.
Carl Rogers was a pioneer of humanistic psychology. He emphasized the importance of connection between therapist and client. He developed the Theory of Self, which in its whole is a theory about self-reflection and growth that takes in your environment as a heavy influence. He also defined what a fully functional person is and made significant contributions to psychopathology.
Erik Erikson, who is credited with the development of multiple theories such as ego psychology and the Theory of Personality. Where he separates different virtues into different stages of life and development with the idea that the person needs to learn how to balance both sides of this virtue, the positive and the negative. Some of his most notable work has been done on the psychology of religion, with him first aknowledging it in context to his theory and then continuing on to writing books about different social and political figures with it, such as Martin Luther King Jr.
B.F. Skinner most heavily contributed to the theory of behaviorism, developing behavioral analysis and founded the experimental analysis of behavior. Skinner believed in radical behaviorism, and in which he believed that free will wasn’t a thing as much as behavior being variable to environmental factors. He wrote multiple books on behaviorism such as “Verbal Behavior” which served as a cultimation of his research on behaviorism.
Aaron Becker transformed Cognitive Behavioral Theory into what it is today. Working with mostly depressed patients his theory was at first mainly integrated with them, categorizing automatic thoughts (impulsive, spontaneous thoughts) into different categories based on who it would affect and so on. Later on, CBT would branch into different disorders and become what it is today.
Albert Bandura’s work was one that first connected behaviorism and cognitive psychology. This can be seen with his theories such as his: Social Learning and Social Cognitive Theory. The Social Learning Theory proposes that we imitate what we observe around us which could be applied to a variety of settings while the Social Cognitive Theory also emphasizes the importance of other’s thoughts and how they impact an individual’s actions.
What have we all heard about? (Nature v Nurture debate)
I wanted to end the first newsletter with one psychological debate most of us should be familiar with: Nature vs Nurture. The concept was first introduced in 94 BC in Ancient China, in a comment said by Chen Sheng Wu Guang, but the first official piece that addressed this was John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Standing” which takes a firm nurture stance. Yet this debate around the idea of “innate ideas” was more philosophical than psychological. So how did this become one of psychology’s most famous and well known debates?
It mostly started due to everyone’s favorite guy, Charles Darwin, his theory of evolution had people more interested in the environment an individual begins in more than anything. While this was happening there also was a focus on studying how culture influences someone’s life. In the 1920s, a man named John B Watson, asked for a dozen infants and wanted to choose one just to raise on his own. You would think he’s a nurture person as well (No one really knows). Yet he is one of the few that comes to mind when you think of Purist Behaviorism (also known as Nurture while negating any impact made by the environment.). Then we also have Determinism, something we all learnt in our high school biology class, which means the environment sets the boundaries and limits for you. In the context of this debate, it arrived through Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin, in which they criticize genetic determinism through the Marxist framework.
By the 1990s, studies became much easier to perform which meant more advancements in this debate, and by extension, genetic studies. Which led to being able to refute the more extreme views made by Watson.
This debate has been one of the most talked about in psychology, and with it, it has grown into multiple fields of science, such as genetic studies or biology. It has been a key player in shedding light onto social inequities as well, such as figuring out why African Americans have a higher rate of incarceration than most racial groups (No surprise it's because of systemic racism.) This one debate has caused so many people to dig deeper on so many issues and question the why. Which is what psychology is all about.
Sources:
Online Psychology Degrees. (n.d.). The 10 most important people in the history of psychology. https://www.online-psychology-degrees.org/study/important-people-history-psychology/
National Institute of Mental Health. (n.d.). Health topics. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Topics. https://www.apa.org/topics
Open Textbook Library. (n.d.). Psychology textbooks. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/psychology -
NOBA Project. (n.d.). Browse content. https://nobaproject.com/browse-content
