Being tasked with starting a Psychology Blog on Haabaa blogs, my first though was; where the heck do I start and what topic do I start with? The answer came to me after the first wave of panic subsided, ‘why not start from the beginning’ so I will start at the very beginning of Psychology (At least that is where most institution seem to started teaching Psychology) the definition of Psychology.
Defining Psychology is a huge task, there is no agreement among Psychologist about a single universal definition of Psychology, and there are almost as many definitions for Psychology as there are Psychologist. Though most Psychologists seem to agree on a rough definition that goes like this: Psychology is the science of mental processes and behavior. But when other Psychologist start to scrutinize that definitions it starts to fall apart, some Social Psychologists for example do not agree that Psychology is a science hence the will love to hack off the part of the definitions that mention the word ‘Science’ by the time other schools of thoughts in Psychology hack off the bit they do not like about the above description there won’t be much left.
This lack of agreed definition of Psychology makes it necessary for most Psychologists to fashion their own definition. My favorite definition of Psychology used to be ‘The study of the blindingly obvious’ because most people see Psychological theories and finding achieving only a very modest advance on common sense; this allegation both from within and outside Psychology keeps Psychologist on the defensive most of the time.
Eysench (1998) countering the above attack on Psychology argued that the above argument does not stand up to scrutiny, he argued further that commonsense does not include a coherent body of knowledge about human behavior.
I find Eysench’s argument a powerful one, this and my observing of friends and relative wrestling with various human challenges which I think a little knowledge of Psychology could have alleviated made me arrive at a new definition for Psychology; ‘The Human Experience Users Guide’
Haven defined Psychology my way, I will now list some definition of Psychology by real Psychologists and not wannabe like me, and here we go:
Definition of Psychology
Are you a Psychologist, how would you define Psychology? please define Psychology your way in the comment box, if you like I can add it to the definitions on the body of this blog.
Some well know definition of Psychology:
Author, unknow.
Sternberg, 1995.
Eysench, M. 1998.
I do wish I had found this Blog when it first started!
A really valuable resource.
Now, as for defining psychology, I agree there is a huge dispute, and definitions vary depending on which ‘type’ of psychology you are involved in.
Personally I like Sternberg’s definition, of ‘The study of the mind and of behaviour’ as highlighted by on the Blog – however it is missing one word ‘human’, which may be important! There again, psychology is being used to understand animal behaviour as well, so perhaps it is correct to leave that out.
The advantage that definition has is that it avoids the word ’science’ – which itself is open to much interpretation. Although perhaps we should include the word ’systematic’ before study, so that we can emphasise the need for good quality research!
Sorry it took me so long to find this blog…
Stephanie at BizFace
October 14th, 2007