contemporary psychology essay

1.3 Contemporary Psychology

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Appreciate the diversity of interests and foci within psychology
• Understand basic interests and applications in each of the described areas of psychology
• Demonstrate familiarity with some of the major concepts or important figures in each of the described areas of psychology

Contemporary psychology is a diverse field that is influenced by all of the historical perspectives described in the preceding section. Reflective of the discipline’s diversity is the diversity seen within the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the United States. The APA is the largest organization of psychologists in the world, and its mission is to advance and disseminate psychological knowledge for the betterment of people. There are 56 divisions within the APA, representing a wide variety of specialties that range from Societies for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality to Exercise and Sport Psychology to Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. Reflecting the diversity of the field of psychology itself, members, affiliate members, and associate members span the spectrum from students to doctoral-level psychologists, and come from a variety of places including educational settings, criminal justice, hospitals, the armed forces, and industry (American Psychological Association, 2014). The Association for Psychological Science (APS) was founded in 1988 and seeks to advance the scientific orientation of psychology. Its founding resulted from disagreements between members of the scientific and clinical branches of psychology within the APA. The APS publishes five research journals and engages in education and advocacy with funding agencies. A significant proportion of its members are international, although the majority is located in the United States. Other organizations provide networking and collaboration opportunities for professionals of several ethnic or racial groups working in psychology, such as the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA), the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA), the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), and the Society of Indian Psychologists (SIP). Most of these groups are also dedicated to studying psychological and social issues within their specific communities.

This section will provide an overview of the major subdivisions within psychology today in the order in which they are introduced throughout the remainder of this textbook. This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing, but it will provide insight into the major areas of research and practice of modern-day psychologists.

Student resources are also provided by the APA.

BIOPSYCHOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

   As the name suggests, biopsychology explores how our biology influences our behavior. While biological psychology is a broad field, many biological psychologists want to understand how the structure and function of the nervous system is related to behavior (figure below). As such, they often combine the research strategies of both psychologists and physiologists to accomplish this goal (as discussed in Carlson, 2013).

   The research interests of biological psychologists span a number of domains, including but not limited to, sensory and motor systems, sleep, drug use and abuse, ingestive behavior, reproductive behavior, neurodevelopment, plasticity of the nervous system, and biological correlates of psychological disorders. Given the broad areas of interest falling under the purview of biological psychology, it will probably come as no surprise that individuals from all sorts of backgrounds are involved in this research, including biologists, medical professionals, physiologists, and chemists. This interdisciplinary approach is often referred to as neuroscience, of which biological psychology is a component (Carlson, 2013).

While biopsychology typically focuses on the immediate causes of behavior based in the physiology of a human or other animal, evolutionary psychology seeks to study the ultimate biological causes of behavior. To the extent that a behavior is impacted by genetics, a behavior, like any anatomical characteristic of a human or animal, will demonstrate adaption to its surroundings. These surroundings include the physical environment and, since interactions between organisms can be important to survival and reproduction, the social environment. The study of behavior in the context of evolution has its origins with Charles Darwin, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was well aware that behaviors should be adaptive and wrote books titled, The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), to explore this field.

Evolutionary psychology, and specifically, the evolutionary psychology of humans, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades. To be subject to evolution by natural selection, a behavior must have a significant genetic cause. In general, we expect all human cultures to express a behavior if it is caused genetically, since the genetic differences among human groups are small. The approach taken by most evolutionary psychologists is to predict the outcome of a behavior in a particular situation based on evolutionary theory and then to make observations, or conduct experiments, to determine whether the results match the theory. It is important to recognize that these types of studies are not strong evidence that a behavior is adaptive, since they lack information that the behavior is in some part genetic and not entirely cultural (Endler, 1986). Demonstrating that a trait, especially in humans, is naturally selected is extraordinarily difficult; perhaps for this reason, some evolutionary psychologists are content to assume the behaviors they study have genetic determinants (Confer et al., 2010).

One other drawback of evolutionary psychology is that the traits that we possess now evolved under environmental and social conditions far back in human history, and we have a poor understanding of what these conditions were. This makes predictions about what is adaptive for a behavior difficult. Behavioral traits need not be adaptive under current conditions, only under the conditions of the past when they evolved, about which we can only hypothesize.

There are many areas of human behavior for which evolution can make predictions. Examples include memory, mate choice, relationships between kin, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status (Confer et al., 2010).

Evolutionary psychologists have had success in finding experimental correspondence between observations and expectations. In one example, in a study of mate preference differences between men and women that spanned 37 cultures, Buss (1989) found that women valued earning potential factors greater than men, and men valued potential reproductive factors (youth and attractiveness) greater than women in their prospective mates. In general, the predictions were in line with the predictions of evolution, although there were deviations in some cultures.

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

   Scientists interested in both physiological aspects of sensory systems as well as in the psychological experience of sensory information work within the area of sensation and perception (figure below). As such, sensation and perception research is also quite interdisciplinary. Imagine walking between buildings as you move from one class to another. You are inundated with sights, sounds, touch sensations, and smells. You also experience the temperature of the air around you and maintain your balance as you make your way. These are all factors of interest to someone working in the domain of sensation and perception.

   As described in a later chapter that focuses on the results of studies in sensation and perception, our experience of our world is not as simple as the sum total of the sensory information (or sensations) together.  Rather, our experience (or perception) is complex and is influenced by where we focus our attention, our previous experiences, and even our cultural backgrounds.

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

   As mentioned in the previous section, the cognitive revolution created an impetus for psychologists to focus their attention on better understanding the mind and mental processes that underlie behavior. Thus, cognitive psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on studying cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationship to our experiences and our actions. Like biological psychology, cognitive psychology is broad in its scope and often involves collaborations among people from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds. This has led some to coin the term cognitive science to describe the interdisciplinary nature of this area of research (Miller, 2003).

View a brief video recapping some of the major concepts explored by cognitive psychologists.

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

   Developmental psychology is the scientific study of development across a lifespan. Developmental psychologists are interested in processes related to physical maturation. However, their focus is not limited to the physical changes associated with aging, as they also focus on changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social behavior, and other psychological attributes.

Early developmental psychologists focused primarily on changes that occurred through reaching adulthood, providing enormous insight into the differences in physical, cognitive, and social capacities that exist between very young children and adults. For instance, research by Jean Piaget (figure below) demonstrated that very young children do not demonstrate object permanence. Object permanence refers to the understanding that physical things continue to exist, even if they are hidden from us. If you were to show an adult a toy, and then hide it behind a curtain, the adult knows that the toy still exists. However, very young infants act as if a hidden object no longer exists. The age at which object permanence is achieved is somewhat controversial (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, and Siegler, 1997).

While Piaget was focused on cognitive changes during infancy and childhood as we move to adulthood, there is an increasing interest in extending research into the changes that occur much later in life. This may be reflective of changing population demographics of developed nations as a whole. As more and more people live longer lives, the number of people of advanced age will continue to increase. Indeed, it is estimated that there were just over 40 million people aged 65 or older living in the United States in 2010. However, by 2020, this number is expected to increase to about 55 million. By the year 2050, it is estimated that nearly 90 million people in this country will be 65 or older (Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.).

PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

   Personality psychology focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique. Several individuals (e.g., Freud and Maslow) that we have already discussed in our historical overview of psychology, and the American psychologist Gordon Allport, contributed to early theories of personality. These early theorists attempted to explain how an individual’s personality develops from his or her given perspective. For example, Freud proposed that personality arose as conflicts between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind were carried out over the lifespan. Specifically, Freud theorized that an individual went through various psychosexual stages of development. According to Freud, adult personality would result from the resolution of various conflicts that centered on the migration of erogenous (or sexual pleasure-producing) zones from the oral (mouth) to the anus to the phallus to the genitals. Like many of Freud’s theories, this particular idea was controversial and did not lend itself to experimental tests (Person, 1980).

More recently, the study of personality has taken on a more quantitative approach. Rather than explaining how personality arises, research is focused on identifying personality traits, measuring these traits, and determining how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation. Personality traits are relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior, and many have proposed that five trait dimensions are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals. These five dimensions are known as the “Big Five” or the Five Factor model , and include dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion (figure below). Each of these traits has been demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan (e.g., Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt, Pulkinnen, and Kokko, 2007; Soldz & Vaillant, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 2008) and is influenced by genetics (e.g., Jang, Livesly, and Vernon, 1996).

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

   Social psychology focuses on how we interact with and relate to others. Social psychologists conduct research on a wide variety of topics that include differences in how we explain our own behavior versus how we explain the behaviors of others, prejudice, and attraction, and how we resolve interpersonal conflicts. Social psychologists have also sought to determine how being among other people changes our own behavior and patterns of thinking.

There are many interesting examples of social psychological research, and you will read about many of these in a later chapter of this textbook. Until then, you will be introduced to one of the most controversial psychological studies ever conducted. Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist who is most famous for research that he conducted on obedience. After the holocaust, in 1961, a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was accused of committing mass atrocities, was put on trial. Many people wondered how German soldiers were capable of torturing prisoners in concentration camps, and they were unsatisfied with the excuses given by soldiers that they were simply following orders. At the time, most psychologists agreed that few people would be willing to inflict such extraordinary pain and suffering, simply because they were obeying orders. Milgram decided to conduct research to determine whether or not this was true (figure below). As you will read later in the text, Milgram found that nearly two-thirds of his participants were willing to deliver what they believed to be lethal shocks to another person, simply because they were instructed to do so by an authority figure (in this case, a man dressed in a lab coat). This was in spite of the fact that participants received payment for simply showing up for the research study and could have chosen not to inflict pain or more serious consequences on another person by withdrawing from the study. No one was actually hurt or harmed in any way, Milgram’s experiment was a clever ruse that took advantage of research confederates, those who pretend to be participants in a research study who are actually working for the researcher and have clear, specific directions on how to behave during the research study (Hock, 2009). Milgram’s and others’ studies that involved deception and potential emotional harm to study participants catalyzed the development of ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research that discourage the use of deception of research subjects, unless it can be argued not to cause harm and, in general, requiring informed consent of participants.

INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

   Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O psychology) is a subfield of psychology that applies psychological theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings. I-O psychologists are often involved in issues related to personnel management, organizational structure, and workplace environment. Businesses often seek the aid of I-O psychologists to make the best hiring decisions as well as to create an environment that results in high levels of employee productivity and efficiency. In addition to its applied nature, I-O psychology also involves conducting scientific research on behavior within I-O settings (Riggio, 2013).

HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

   Health psychology focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. This particular approach is known as the biopsychosocial model (figure below). Health psychologists are interested in helping individuals achieve better health through public policy, education, intervention, and research. Health psychologists might conduct research that explores the relationship between one’s genetic makeup, patterns of behavior, relationships, psychological stress, and health. They may research effective ways to motivate people to address patterns of behavior that contribute to poorer health (MacDonald, 2013).

SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY

   Researchers in sport and exercise psychology study the psychological aspects of sport performance, including motivation and performance anxiety, and the effects of sport on mental and emotional wellbeing. Research is also conducted on similar topics as they relate to physical exercise in general. The discipline also includes topics that are broader than sport and exercise but that are related to interactions between mental and physical performance under demanding conditions, such as fire fighting, military operations, artistic performance, and surgery.

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

   Clinical psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior. As such, it is generally considered to be a more applied area within psychology; however, some clinicians are also actively engaged in scientific research. Counseling psychology is a similar discipline that focuses on emotional, social, vocational, and health-related outcomes in individuals who are considered psychologically healthy.

As mentioned earlier, both Freud and Rogers provided perspectives that have been influential in shaping how clinicians interact with people seeking psychotherapy. While aspects of the psychoanalytic theory are still found among some of today’s therapists who are trained from a psychodynamic perspective, Roger’s ideas about client-centered therapy have been especially influential in shaping how many clinicians operate. Furthermore, both behaviorism and the cognitive revolution have shaped clinical practice in the forms of behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy (figure below). Issues related to the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and problematic patterns of behavior will be discussed in detail in later chapters of this textbook.

By far, this is the area of psychology that receives the most attention in popular media, and many people mistakenly assume that all psychology is clinical psychology.

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

   Forensic psychology is a branch of psychology that deals questions of psychology as they arise in the context of the justice system. For example, forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists) will assess a person’s competency to stand trial, assess the state of mind of a defendant, act as consultants on child custody cases, consult on sentencing and treatment recommendations, and advise on issues such as eyewitness testimony and children’s testimony (American Board of Forensic Psychology, 2014). In these capacities, they will typically act as expert witnesses, called by either side in a court case to provide their research- or experience-based opinions. As expert witnesses, forensic psychologists must have a good understanding of the law and provide information in the context of the legal system rather than just within the realm of psychology. Forensic psychologists are also used in the jury selection process and witness preparation. They may also be involved in providing psychological treatment within the criminal justice system. Criminal profilers are a relatively small proportion of psychologists that act as consultants to law enforcement.

The APA provides career information about various areas of psychology.

   Psychology is a diverse discipline that is made up of several major subdivisions with unique perspectives. Biological psychology involves the study of the biological bases of behavior. Sensation and perception refer to the area of psychology that is focused on how information from our sensory modalities is received, and how this information is transformed into our perceptual experiences of the world around us. Cognitive psychology is concerned with the relationship that exists between thought and behavior, and developmental psychologists study the physical and cognitive changes that occur throughout one’s lifespan. Personality psychology focuses on individuals’ unique patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. Industrial and organizational psychology, health psychology, sport and exercise psychology, forensic psychology, and clinical psychology are all considered applied areas of psychology. Industrial and organizational psychologists apply psychological concepts to I-O settings. Health psychologists look for ways to help people live healthier lives, and clinical psychology involves the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic behavioral patterns. Sport and exercise psychologists study the interactions between thoughts, emotions, and physical performance in sports, exercise, and other activities. Forensic psychologists carry out activities related to psychology in association with the justice system.

References:

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter licensed under CC BY v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Review Questions:

1. A researcher interested in how changes in the cells of the hippocampus (a structure in the brain related to learning and memory) are related to memory formation would be most likely to identify as a(n) ________ psychologist.

a. biological

c. clinical

2. An individual’s consistent pattern of thought and behavior is known as a(n) ________.

a. psychosexual stage

b. object permanence

c. personality

d. perception

3. In Milgram’s controversial study on obedience, nearly ________ of the participants were willing to administer what appeared to be lethal electrical shocks to another person because they were told to do so by an authority figure.

4. A researcher interested in what factors make an employee best suited for a given job would most likely identify as a(n) ________ psychologist.

a. personality

b. clinical

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. Given the incredible diversity among the various areas of psychology that were described in this section, how do they all fit together?

2. What are the potential ethical concerns associated with Milgram’s research on obedience?

Personal Application Question:

1. Now that you’ve been briefly introduced to some of the major areas within psychology, which are you most interested in learning more about? Why?

American Psychological Association

biopsychology

biopsychosocial model

clinical psychology

cognitive psychology

counseling psychology 

developmental psychology

forensic psychology

personality psychology 

personality trait 

sport and exercise psychology 

Key Takeaways

1. Although the different perspectives all operate on different levels of analyses, have different foci of interests, and different methodological approaches, all of these areas share a focus on understanding and/or correcting patterns of thought and/or behavior.

2. Many people have questioned how ethical this particular research was. Although no one was actually harmed in Milgram’s study, many people have questioned how the knowledge that you would be willing to inflict incredible pain and/or death to another person, simply because someone in authority told you to do so, would affect someone’s self-concept and psychological health. Furthermore, the degree to which deception was used in this particular study raises a few eyebrows.

American Psychological Association:  professional organization representing psychologists in the United States

biopsychology:  study of how biology influences behavior

biopsychosocial model:  perspective that asserts that biology, psychology, and social factors interact to determine an individual’s health

clinical psychology:  area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior

cognitive psychology:  study of cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationship to experiences and actions

counseling psychology:  area of psychology that focuses on improving emotional, social, vocational, and other aspects of the lives of psychologically healthy

individuals

developmental psychology:  scientific study of development across a lifespan

forensic psychology:  area of psychology that applies the science and practice of psychology to issues within and related to the justice system

personality psychology:  study of patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique

personality trait:  consistent pattern of thought and behavior

sport and exercise psychology:  area of psychology that focuses on the interactions between mental and emotional factors and physical performance in sports, exercise, and other activities

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The Origins of Psychology

From Philosophical Beginnings to the Modern Day

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Adah Chung is a fact checker, writer, researcher, and occupational therapist. 

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

• Importance of History
• Structuralism

Functionalism

• Psychoanalysis
• Behaviorism
• The Third Force

Cognitive Psychology

While the psychology of today reflects the discipline's rich and varied history, the origins of psychology differ significantly from contemporary conceptions of the field. In order to gain a full understanding of psychology, you need to spend some time exploring its history and origins.

How did psychology originate? When did it begin? Who were the people responsible for establishing psychology as a separate science?

Why Study Psychology History?

Contemporary psychology is interested in an enormous range of topics, looking at human behavior and mental process from the neural level to the cultural level. Psychologists study human issues that begin before birth and continue until death. By understanding the history of psychology, you can gain a better understanding of how these topics are studied and what we have learned thus far.

From its earliest beginnings, psychology has been faced with a number of questions. The initial question of how to define psychology helped establish it as a science separate from physiology and philosophy.

Additional questions that psychologists have faced throughout history include:

• Is psychology really a science?
• Should psychologists use research to influence public policy, education, and other aspects of human behavior?
• Should psychology focus on observable behaviors, or on internal mental processes?
• What research methods should be used to study psychology?
• Which topics and issues should psychology be concerned with?

Background: Philosophy and Physiology

While psychology did not emerge as a separate discipline until the late 1800s, its earliest history can be traced back to the time of the early Greeks. During the 17th-century, the French philosopher Rene Descartes introduced the idea of dualism, which asserted that the mind and body were two entities that interact to form the human experience.

Many other issues still debated by psychologists today, such as the relative contributions of nature vs. nurture , are rooted in these early philosophical traditions.

So what makes psychology different from philosophy? While early philosophers relied on methods such as observation and logic, today’s psychologists utilize scientific methodologies to study and draw conclusions about human thought and behavior.

Physiology also contributed to psychology’s eventual emergence as a scientific discipline. Early physiological research on the brain and behavior had a dramatic impact on psychology, ultimately contributing to applying scientific methodologies to the study of human thought and behavior.

Psychology Emerges as a Separate Discipline

During the mid-1800s, a German physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt was using scientific research methods to investigate reaction times. His book published in 1873, "Principles of Physiological Psychology," outlined many of the major connections between the science of physiology and the study of human thought and behavior.  

He later opened the world’s first psychology lab in 1879 at the University of Leipzig. This event is generally considered the official start of psychology as a separate and distinct scientific discipline.

How did Wundt view psychology? He perceived the subject as the study of human consciousness and sought to apply experimental methods to studying internal mental processes. While his use of a process known as introspection is seen as unreliable and unscientific today, his early work in psychology helped set the stage for future experimental methods.

An estimated 17,000 students attended Wundt’s psychology lectures, and hundreds more pursued degrees in psychology and studied in his psychology lab. While his influence dwindled as the field matured, his impact on psychology is unquestionable.

Structuralism: Psychology’s First School of Thought

Edward B. Titchener , one of Wundt’s most famous students, would go on to found psychology’s first major school of thought . According to the structuralists , human consciousness could be broken down into smaller parts. Using a process known as introspection, trained subjects would attempt to break down their responses and reactions to the most basic sensation and perceptions.

While structuralism is notable for its emphasis on scientific research, its methods were unreliable, limiting, and subjective. When Titchener died in 1927, structuralism essentially died with him.

The Functionalism of William James

Psychology flourished in America during the mid- to late-1800s. William James emerged as one of the major American psychologists during this period and publishing his classic textbook, "The Principles of Psychology," established him as the father of American psychology.

His book soon became the standard text in psychology and his ideas eventually served as the basis for a new school of thought known as functionalism.

The focus of functionalism was about how behavior actually works to help people live in their environment. Functionalists utilized methods such as direct observation to study the human mind and behavior.

Both of these early schools of thought emphasized human consciousness, but their conceptions of it were significantly different. While the structuralists sought to break down mental processes into their smallest parts, the functionalists believed that consciousness existed as a more continuous and changing process.

While functionalism quickly faded a separate school of thought, it would go on to influence later psychologists and theories of human thought and behavior.

The Emergence of Psychoanalysis

Up to this point, early psychology stressed conscious human experience. An Austrian physician named  Sigmund Freud  changed the face of psychology in a dramatic way, proposing a theory of personality that emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind.

Freud’s clinical work with patients suffering from hysteria and other ailments led him to believe that early childhood experiences and unconscious impulses contributed to the development of adult personality and behavior.

In his book "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life " Freud detailed how these unconscious thoughts and impulses are expressed, often through slips of the tongue (known as  "Freudian slips" ) and  dreams . According to Freud, psychological disorders are the result of these unconscious conflicts becoming extreme or unbalanced.

The psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud had a tremendous impact on 20th-century thought, influencing the mental health field as well as other areas including art, literature, and popular culture. While many of his ideas are viewed with skepticism today, his influence on psychology is undeniable.

The Rise of Behaviorism

Psychology changed dramatically during the early 20th-century as another school of thought known as  behaviorism  rose to dominance. Behaviorism was a major change from previous theoretical perspectives, rejecting the emphasis on both the  conscious and unconscious mind . Instead, behaviorism strove to make psychology a more scientific discipline by focusing purely on observable behavior.

Behaviorism had its earliest start with the work of a Russian physiologist named  Ivan Pavlov . Pavlov's research on the digestive systems of dogs led to his discovery of the  classical conditioning  process, which proposed that behaviors could be learned via conditioned associations.

Pavlov demonstrated that this learning process could be used to make an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.

An American psychologist named  John B. Watson  soon became one of the strongest advocates of behaviorism. Initially outlining the basic principles of this new school of thought in his 1913 paper  Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It , Watson later went on to offer a definition in his classic book "Behaviorism "  (1924), writing:

"Behaviorism...holds that the subject matter of human psychology  is the behavior of the human being.  Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definite nor a usable concept. The behaviorist, who has been trained always as an experimentalist, holds, further, that belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic."

The impact of behaviorism was enormous, and this school of thought continued to dominate for the next 50 years. Psychologist  B.F. Skinner  furthered the behaviorist perspective with his concept of  operant conditioning , which demonstrated the effect of punishment and reinforcement on behavior.

While behaviorism eventually lost its dominant grip on psychology, the basic principles of behavioral psychology are still widely in use today.

Therapeutic techniques such as  behavior analysis , behavioral modification, and token economies are often utilized to help children learn new skills and overcome maladaptive behaviors, while conditioning is used in many situations ranging from parenting to education.

The Third Force in Psychology

While the first half of the 20th century was dominated by psychoanalysis and behaviorism, a new school of thought known as humanistic psychology emerged during the second half of the century. Often referred to as the "third force" in psychology, this theoretical perspective emphasized conscious experiences.

American psychologist  Carl Rogers  is often considered to be one of the founders of this school of thought. While psychoanalysts looked at unconscious impulses and behaviorists focused on environmental causes, Rogers believed strongly in the power of free will and self-determination.  

Psychologist  Abraham Maslow  also contributed to humanistic psychology with his famous hierarchy of needs  theory of human motivation. This theory suggested that people were motivated by increasingly complex needs. Once the most basic needs are fulfilled, people then become motivated to pursue higher level needs.  

During the 1950s and 1960s, a movement known as the cognitive revolution began to take hold in psychology. During this time, cognitive psychology began to replace psychoanalysis and behaviorism as the dominant approach to the study of psychology. Psychologists were still interested in looking at observable behaviors, but they were also concerned with what was going on inside the mind. 

Since that time, cognitive psychology has remained a dominant area of psychology as researchers continue to study things such as perception, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, intelligence, and language.

The introduction of brain imaging tools such as MRI and PET scans have helped improve the ability of researchers to more closely study the inner workings of the human brain.

Psychology Continues to Grow

As you have seen in this brief overview of psychology’s history, this discipline has seen dramatic growth and change since its official beginnings in Wundt’s lab. The story certainly does not end here.

Psychology has continued to evolve since 1960 and new ideas and  perspectives  have been introduced. Recent research in psychology looks at many aspects of the human experience, from the biological influences on behavior on the impact of social and cultural factors.

Today, the majority of psychologists do not identify themselves with a single school of thought. Instead, they often focus on a particular specialty area or perspective, often drawing on ideas from a range of theoretical backgrounds. This eclectic approach has contributed new ideas and theories that will continue to shape psychology for years to come.

Women in Psychology History

As you read through any history of psychology, you might be particularly struck by the fact that such texts seem to center almost entirely on the theories and contributions of men. This is not because women had no interest in the field of psychology, but is largely due to the fact that women were excluded from pursuing academic training and practice during the early years of the field.

There are a number of women who made important contributions to the early history of psychology, although their work is sometimes overlooked. 

A few pioneering women psychologists included:  

• Mary Whiton Calkins , who rightfully earned a doctorate from Harvard, although the school refused to grant her degree because she was a woman. She studied with major thinkers of the day like William James, Josiah Royce, and Hugo Munsterberg. Despite the obstacles she faced, she became the American Psychological Association's first woman president.
• Anna Freud , who made important contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. She described many of the defense mechanisms and is known as the founder of child psychoanalysis. She also had an influence on other psychologists including Erik Erikson.
• Mary Ainsworth , who was a developmental psychologist, made important contributions to our understanding of attachment . She developed a technique for studying child and caregiver attachments known as the "Strange Situation" assessment.

A Word From Verywell

In order to understand how psychology became the science that it is today, it is important to learn more about some of the historical events that have influenced its development.

While some of the theories that emerged during the earliest years of psychology may now be viewed as simplistic, outdated, or incorrect, these influences shaped the direction of the field and helped us form a greater understanding of the human mind and behavior.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

How to Write a Psychology Essay

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Before you write your essay, it’s important to analyse the task and understand exactly what the essay question is asking. Your lecturer may give you some advice – pay attention to this as it will help you plan your answer.

Next conduct preliminary reading based on your lecture notes. At this stage, it’s not crucial to have a robust understanding of key theories or studies, but you should at least have a general “gist” of the literature.

After reading, plan a response to the task. This plan could be in the form of a mind map, a summary table, or by writing a core statement (which encompasses the entire argument of your essay in just a few sentences).

After writing your plan, conduct supplementary reading, refine your plan, and make it more detailed.

It is tempting to skip these preliminary steps and write the first draft while reading at the same time. However, reading and planning will make the essay writing process easier, quicker, and ensure a higher quality essay is produced.

Components of a Good Essay

Now, let us look at what constitutes a good essay in psychology. There are a number of important features.

• Global Structure – structure the material to allow for a logical sequence of ideas. Each paragraph / statement should follow sensibly from its predecessor. The essay should “flow”. The introduction, main body and conclusion should all be linked.
• Each paragraph should comprise a main theme, which is illustrated and developed through a number of points (supported by evidence).
• Knowledge and Understanding – recognize, recall, and show understanding of a range of scientific material that accurately reflects the main theoretical perspectives.
• Critical Evaluation – arguments should be supported by appropriate evidence and/or theory from the literature. Evidence of independent thinking, insight, and evaluation of the evidence.
• Quality of Written Communication – writing clearly and succinctly with appropriate use of paragraphs, spelling, and grammar. All sources are referenced accurately and in line with APA guidelines.

In the main body of the essay, every paragraph should demonstrate both knowledge and critical evaluation.

There should also be an appropriate balance between these two essay components. Try to aim for about a 60/40 split if possible.

Most students make the mistake of writing too much knowledge and not enough evaluation (which is the difficult bit).

It is best to structure your essay according to key themes. Themes are illustrated and developed through a number of points (supported by evidence).

Choose relevant points only, ones that most reveal the theme or help to make a convincing and interesting argument.

Knowledge and Understanding

Remember that an essay is simply a discussion / argument on paper. Don’t make the mistake of writing all the information you know regarding a particular topic.

You need to be concise, and clearly articulate your argument. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences.

Each paragraph should have a purpose / theme, and make a number of points – which need to be support by high quality evidence. Be clear why each point is is relevant to the argument. It would be useful at the beginning of each paragraph if you explicitly outlined the theme being discussed (.e.g. cognitive development, social development etc.).

Try not to overuse quotations in your essays. It is more appropriate to use original content to demonstrate your understanding.

Psychology is a science so you must support your ideas with evidence (not your own personal opinion). If you are discussing a theory or research study make sure you cite the source of the information.

Note this is not the author of a textbook you have read – but the original source / author(s) of the theory or research study.

For example:

Bowlby (1951) claimed that mothering is almost useless if delayed until after two and a half to three years and, for most children, if delayed till after 12 months, i.e. there is a critical period.

Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fullfil the next one, and so on.

As a general rule, make sure there is at least one citation (i.e. name of psychologist and date of publication) in each paragraph.

Remember to answer the essay question. Underline the keywords in the essay title. Don’t make the mistake of simply writing everything you know of a particular topic, be selective. Each paragraph in your essay should contribute to answering the essay question.

Critical Evaluation

In simple terms, this means outlining the strengths and limitations of a theory or research study.

There are many ways you can critically evaluate:

Methodological evaluation of research

Is the study valid / reliable ? Is the sample biased, or can we generalize the findings to other populations? What are the strengths and limitations of the method used and data obtained?

Be careful to ensure that any methodological criticisms are justified and not trite.

Rather than hunting for weaknesses in every study; only highlight limitations that make you doubt the conclusions that the authors have drawn – e.g., where an alternative explanation might be equally likely because something hasn’t been adequately controlled.

Compare or contrast different theories

Outline how the theories are similar and how they differ. This could be two (or more) theories of personality / memory / child development etc. Also try to communicate the value of the theory / study.

Debates or perspectives

Refer to debates such as nature or nurture, reductionism vs. holism, or the perspectives in psychology . For example, would they agree or disagree with a theory or the findings of the study?

What are the ethical issues of the research?

Does a study involve ethical issues such as deception, privacy, psychological or physical harm?

Gender bias

If research is biased towards men or women it does not provide a clear view of the behavior that has been studied. A dominantly male perspective is known as an androcentric bias.

Cultural bias

Is the theory / study ethnocentric? Psychology is predominantly a white, Euro-American enterprise. In some texts, over 90% of studies have US participants, who are predominantly white and middle class.

Does the theory or study being discussed judge other cultures by Western standards?

Animal Research

This raises the issue of whether it’s morally and/or scientifically right to use animals. The main criterion is that benefits must outweigh costs. But benefits are almost always to humans and costs to animals.

Animal research also raises the issue of extrapolation. Can we generalize from studies on animals to humans as their anatomy & physiology is different from humans?

The PEC System

It is very important to elaborate on your evaluation. Don’t just write a shopping list of brief (one or two sentence) evaluation points.

Instead, make sure you expand on your points, remember, quality of evaluation is most important than quantity.

When you are writing an evaluation paragraph, use the PEC system.

• Make your P oint.
• E xplain how and why the point is relevant.
• Discuss the C onsequences / implications of the theory or study. Are they positive or negative?

For Example

• Point: It is argued that psychoanalytic therapy is only of benefit to an articulate, intelligent, affluent minority.
• Explain: Because psychoanalytic therapy involves talking and gaining insight, and is costly and time-consuming, it is argued that it is only of benefit to an articulate, intelligent, affluent minority. Evidence suggests psychoanalytic therapy works best if the client is motivated and has a positive attitude.
• Consequences: A depressed client’s apathy, flat emotional state, and lack of motivation limit the appropriateness of psychoanalytic therapy for depression.

Furthermore, the levels of dependency of depressed clients mean that transference is more likely to develop.

Using Research Studies in your Essays

Research studies can either be knowledge or evaluation.

• If you refer to the procedures and findings of a study, this shows knowledge and understanding.
• If you comment on what the studies shows, and what it supports and challenges about the theory in question, this shows evaluation.

Writing an Introduction

It is often best to write your introduction when you have finished the main body of the essay, so that you have a good understanding of the topic area.

If there is a word count for your essay try to devote 10% of this to your introduction.

Ideally, the introduction should;

Identify the subject of the essay and define the key terms. Highlight the major issues which “lie behind” the question. Let the reader know how you will focus your essay by identifying the main themes to be discussed. “Signpost” the essay’s key argument, (and, if possible, how this argument is structured).

Introductions are very important as first impressions count and they can create a h alo effect in the mind of the lecturer grading your essay. If you start off well then you are more likely to be forgiven for the odd mistake later one.

Writing a Conclusion

So many students either forget to write a conclusion or fail to give it the attention it deserves.

If there is a word count for your essay try to devote 10% of this to your conclusion.

Ideally the conclusion should summarize the key themes / arguments of your essay. State the take home message – don’t sit on the fence, instead weigh up the evidence presented in the essay and make a decision which side of the argument has more support.

Also, you might like to suggest what future research may need to be conducted and why (read the discussion section of journal articles for this).

Don”t include new information / arguments (only information discussed in the main body of the essay).

If you are unsure of what to write read the essay question and answer it in one paragraph.

Points that unite or embrace several themes can be used to great effect as part of your conclusion.

The Importance of Flow

Obviously, what you write is important, but how you communicate your ideas / arguments has a significant influence on your overall grade. Most students may have similar information / content in their essays, but the better students communicate this information concisely and articulately.

When you have finished the first draft of your essay you must check if it “flows”. This is an important feature of quality of communication (along with spelling and grammar).

This means that the paragraphs follow a logical order (like the chapters in a novel). Have a global structure with themes arranged in a way that allows for a logical sequence of ideas. You might want to rearrange (cut and paste) paragraphs to a different position in your essay if they don”t appear to fit in with the essay structure.

To improve the flow of your essay make sure the last sentence of one paragraph links to first sentence of the next paragraph. This will help the essay flow and make it easier to read.

Finally, only repeat citations when it is unclear which study / theory you are discussing. Repeating citations unnecessarily disrupts the flow of an essay.

Referencing

The reference section is the list of all the sources cited in the essay (in alphabetical order). It is not a bibliography (a list of the books you used).

In simple terms every time you cite/refer to a name (and date) of a psychologist you need to reference the original source of the information.

If you have been using textbooks this is easy as the references are usually at the back of the book and you can just copy them down. If you have been using websites, then you may have a problem as they might not provide a reference section for you to copy.

References need to be set out APA style :

Author, A. A. (year). Title of work . Location: Publisher.

Journal Articles

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (year). Article title. Journal Title, volume number (issue number), page numbers

A simple way to write your reference section is use Google scholar . Just type the name and date of the psychologist in the search box and click on the “cite” link.

Next, copy and paste the APA reference into the reference section of your essay.

Once again, remember that references need to be in alphabetical order according to surname.

You can Choose category

Contemporary Psychology: Contributions, Limitations, and Future Prospects

Psychology is a science that studies human mental and behavioral patterns that affect all life spheres. It is interconnected with a great variety of other anthropocentric or human-centered sciences. Thus, humanistic studies are impossible without thorough psychological research and relevant, accurate data. To provide it, psychologists should continuously conduct new studies and update the information. Apart from that, they should assess their contribution to general knowledge, limitations, and prospects.

One of the recent significant studies in the psychological field includes Ponder and Haridaki’s paper. It is dedicated to the correlation between media consumption and the amount and quality of political discourse. Ponder and Haridakis (2015) researched the influence of particular media sources on “the frequency of political discussion” with those from the same political party and those from a different one (p. 281). This study illustrates how communication is affected by the interlocutors’ social statuses and background knowledge. Moreover, it contributed to the study of media’s impact on human behavior.

Another recent paper addressed the issue of insufficient replicability level of contemporary psychological studies. Edlund (2016) identified the roots of the replicability crisis in psychology, such as data fabrication, “the pressures of tenure and promotion,” questionable research methods, and the journals’ preference of novel papers and significant results (p.59). Apart from that, the scholar commented on the techniques employed to overcome it. They include preregistered studies involving independent review of “a study’s background, hypotheses, and methods before any data are collected” and “collaborative projects that conduct multiple replications at the same time” (Edlund, 2016, p. 60). Edlund summarized important observations of other scholars in his editorial, which can help future researchers to assess and revise their approaches, thus increasing the quality of their papers and psychological studies in general.

It is important to develop and check the quality of psychological research as it contributes to other spheres of knowledge. For instance, Bullock (2019) is certain that applying psychological knowledge and further psychological research can help fight poverty and economic inequality. Gulliford’s (2016) studies demonstrated how the psychological approach can clarify ethical concepts and contribute to therapeutic interventions by promoting ethically desirable behavior patterns. On the whole, scientists of various fields consider psychological factors in their research and utilize psychological knowledge to learn more about different life spheres.

However, sometimes existing axioms and paradigms in psychology can hamper new research and might need revision. For example, Grof (2016) concluded that his research of special states of consciousness, which he calls “holotropic,” “represent a serious challenge to contemporary psychiatry and psychology” (p.34). According to the scholar, to fully understand the human mind and consciousness, one needs to “transcend the narrow frame” of contemporary psychiatry and psychology (Grof, 2016, p.34). In brief, many functions and processes of the human brain and mind are still a mystery to researchers. Thus, they should be ready to change perspectives and approaches to develop psychological knowledge further.

In conclusion, contemporary psychological studies contribute both to psychological and general knowledge. The recent psychological studies conducted by Ponder and Haridakis and Edlund highlighted interdisciplinary connections within the humanistic field of knowledge and the important problem of insufficient replicability of psychological papers. Bullock and Gulliford’s studies demonstrated psychology’s input in other life spheres: economic state and ethics. However, Grof pointed out some existing limitations in modern psychology and its narrow frame, which may hamper some types of research. Thus, contemporary psychology has many opportunities and directions for development by making new contributions to general knowledge and revising some existing practices and even whole paradigms to transcend its limits.

Bullock, H. E. (2019). Psychology’s contributions to understanding and alleviating poverty and economic inequality: Introduction to the special section . American Psychologist, 74 (6), 635-640. Web.

Edlund, J. E. (2016). Invited editorial: Let’s do it again: A call for replications in Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research . Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 21 (1), 59-61. https://doi.org/10.24839/2164-8204.JN21.1.59

Grof, S. (2016). Psychology for the future lessons from modern consciousness research . Spirituality Studies 2 (1), 3-36. Web.

Gulliford, L. (2016). Psychology’s contribution to ethics: Two case studies . In: C. Brand (Ed.), Dual-process theories in moral psychology: Interdisciplinary approaches to theoretical, empirical and practical considerations (pp.139-158). Springer VS, Wiesbaden. Web.

Ponder, J. D., & Haridakis, P. (2015). Selectively social politics: The differing roles of media use on political discussion . Mass Communication & Society, 18 (3), 281-302. Web.

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Jung’s “Psychology with the Psyche” and the Behavioral Sciences

The behavioral sciences and Jung’s analytical psychology are set apart by virtue of their respective histories, epistemologies, and definitions of subject matter. This brief paper identifies Jung’s scientific stance, notes perceptions of Jung and obstacles for bringing his system of thought into the fold of the behavioral sciences. The impact of the “science versus art” debate on Jung’s stance is considered with attention to its unfolding in the fin de siècle era.

1. Introduction

To say that there is no place for analytical psychology in the behavioral sciences, does not mean that Jung’s work has no intrinsic value or relevance elsewhere. Insofar as “behavioral sciences” denotes traditional modern psychology, analytical psychology may provide at best an Archimedean vantage point from which to critique it. Jung took that attitude. The “modern belief in the primacy of physical explanations has led … to a ‘psychology without the psyche,’ that is, to the view that the psyche is nothing but a product of biochemical processes,” he contended, and called for summoning up “courage to consider the possibility of a ‘psychology with the psyche,’ that is, a theory of the psyche ultimately based on the postulate of an autonomous, spiritual principle” ([ 1 ], par. 660–661). Conversely, analytical psychology could be critiqued from the standpoint of the behavioral sciences, especially in terms of its methodology.

Jung was making his point in 1931. Twenty-first century behavioral sciences have moved on from the psychologies he was criticizing. Yet, there remains the disparity he noted. On the one hand, sophisticated mathematical models applying dynamical systems theory, along with insights from brain imaging studies, have revitalized the interrelated notions of complexity and emergence. On the other, the trend has not resulted in a turn to holistic epistemology (on the contrary, much of it reinforces reductionism). While some contemporary Jungian analysts are attuned to conceptual trends in science (e.g., [ 2 ]), science is not attuned to the concerns of analytical psychology. The excitement about “embodied embedded cognition” is not without controversy in contemporary cognitive neuroscience (see, e.g., [ 3 ]); but those debates invariably concern the objective living body, not the subjectivity of the lived-in body.

Pursuits of knowledge in analytical psychology and in the behavioral sciences are set apart by virtue of their respective histories, epistemologies, and definitions of subject matter [ 4 , 5 , 6 ], as summarized in this communication.

2. How did Modern Psychology Lose the Psyche

Jung begins his essay “On the Nature of the Psyche” with a historical review [ 7 ]. Up to the seventeenth century, psychology consisted of numerous doctrines concerning the soul, but thinkers spoke from their subjective viewpoint, an attitude that is “totally alien” to the standpoint of modern science ([ 7 ], par. 343). Incidentally, the German word Seele (soul) is usually translated into English as “psyche” when Jung writes about his own theory, perhaps because to Anglophone ears of the mid-twentieth century “psyche” sounded more scientific than “soul”. Jung’s point was that in the past philosophers’ theorizing was based on a naïve belief in the universal validity of their subjective opinions. Having reviewed the objectivity of modern science as an improvement upon pre-Enlightenment thinking, he comments that we can never remove ourselves from the subjective situation: “every science is a function of the psyche, and all knowledge is rooted in it” ([ 7 ], par. 357). Psychology as a science thus finds itself in an acute paradox, for “only the psyche can observe the psyche” ([ 8 ], par. 384).

Spelling out the absurdity of the mind trying to observe itself, Comte had relegated psychology to a prescientific stage, and contended that psychologists mistook their own fantasies for science [ 9 ]. In Comte’s “metaphysical” stage, the supernatural beings of the primitive stage are replaced with “abstract forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena” ([ 9 ], p. 26). This characterization readily applies to notions of libidinal forces and to innate archetypes. In the “scientific” stage, according to Comte, the mind applies itself to the study of the laws of phenomena, describing their invariable relations of succession and resemblances. The behavioral sciences have aspired towards the positivist ideal. The discipline’s historiography dissociates psychology not only from philosophy but also from “metaphysical” depth psychology.

Comte was referring to the long history of psychology as a natural science. Philosophers following the Aristotelian tradition regarded the science of the mind as belonging to physics ( i.e. , the science of nature). However, in the twentieth century, psychology became equated with quantitative experimental methodology, and this “scientific” character was contrasted with the “metaphysical” character of its earlier namesake [ 10 ]. Textbooks written by psychologists typically describe psychology as coming into being by virtue of its split from philosophy when Wundt opened the first laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Between 1880 and 1920, American psychologists waged a battle against spiritualism and psychic research in their attempt to define boundaries for their new discipline [ 11 ]. William James started his essay “A Plea for Psychology as a ‘Natural Science”’ with the contention that although psychology was “hardly more than what physics was before Galileo … a mass of phenomenal description, gossip, and myth,” it nonetheless included enough “real material” to justify optimism about becoming “worthy of the name of natural science at no very distant day” ([ 12 ], p. 146). Four decades later, Lewin admitted that the battle “is not by any means complete,” but optimistically opined that the “most important general circumstances which paved the way for Galilean concepts in physics are clearly and distinctly to be seen in present-day psychology” ([ 13 ], p. 22). To date, a Galilean revolution has not happened. Yet, as Coon put it, psychology “has never recovered from its adolescent physics envy” ([ 11 ], p. 143). Although psychologists today seldom compare their science to physics, they tend to locate it within the natural sciences. For instance, Fuchs and Milar trace the origins of psychology to physiology (not philosophy) and its branching into psychophysics, and then through behaviorism to cognitive psychology [ 14 ].

Any telling of history is selective, biased in some way; and the bias serves an agenda. Costall exposes “a comprehensive and highly persuasive myth” about the origins of scientific psychology ([ 15 ], p. 635). He notes that according to most textbooks, psychology began as the study of mind based on the introspective method (associated with Wundt’s laboratory). In reaction to the unreliability of that method, behaviorism redefined psychology as the study of behavior, based on experimentation. In reaction to the bankruptcy of behaviorism, the cognitive revolution restored the mind as the proper subject of psychology, but now with the benefit of the rigorous experimental and statistical methods developed by the behaviorists—a storyline that has the structure of Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Revisiting the early literature, Costall demonstrates that all three stages of this history are largely fictional. Moreover, “the inaccuracies and outright inventions of ‘textbook histories’ are not just a question of carelessness. These fictional histories help convey the values of the discipline, and a sense of destiny” ([ 15 ], p. 635).

The psychoanalytic movement has been written out of that history and destiny (Costall does not mention it). However, in Jung’s time and place, “medical psychology” was more separate from the then-new science of psychology than present-day clinical psychology is from the behavioral sciences. In late-nineteenth century German universities, vested interests of influential professors played a key role in the designation of experimental psychology to the natural sciences [ 16 ]. Dilthey regarded psychology as belonging in the humanities on grounds that it concerns inner experience [ 17 ]. Drawing a contrast between the outer experience of nature (which is presented as phenomenal and in isolated data) and the inner experience of psychic life, which is holistically presented as a living active reality, Dilthey argued that for psychology to imitate a method that was successful in the natural sciences would involve treating an interconnected whole as if it were merely an assemblage of discrete entities. It would mean overriding descriptions of the subjectively lived experience in favor of the hypothetico-deductive method [ 18 ]. This argument has lost out in university departments; but it is implicitly sustained by analytical psychology to date.

3. Jung’s Scientific Stance

Foucault attributed the creation of the modern “soul” to historical conditions set in motion in the eighteenth century. Concepts such as psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness, etc. , were created so as to carve out domains of analyzing the post-Enlightenment soul, building upon it “scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism” ([ 19 ], p. 30). The moral claim is implicit in Jung’s statement, “We doctors are forced, for the sake of our patients, … to tackle the darkest and most desperate problems of the soul, conscious all the time of the possible consequences of a false step” ([ 20 ], par. 170). Yet, it is a paradox of modernity that when we seek to apply scientific techniques and discourses, the soul—the seat of subjectivity—vanishes.

Jung was a man of science by virtue of being a medical doctor, but he was not a scientist. He averred that unlike experimental psychology, analytical psychology does not isolate functions and then subject them to experimental conditions, but is “far more concerned with the total manifestation of the psyche as a natural phenomenon” ([ 20 ], par. 170). To him, the totality includes the unconscious as well as conscious mind. Being centered on the unconscious characterizes analytical psychology as a psychology with the psyche; and this characterization means that it would “certainly not be a modern psychology,” since “all modern ‘psychologies without the psyche’ are psychologies of consciousness, for which an unconscious psychic life simply does not exist” ([ 1 ], par. 658).

However, his psychology does not merely state that an unconscious exists. It is premised on the notion that its existence can be demonstrated through observations of its effects. In this regard, his psychology is modern. It subscribes to the worldview—not the method—of modern science. As Weber put it in 1918, “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world”’ ([ 21 ], p. 155); (see [ 22 ] for a historian’s account of this worldview). The model of the psyche that Jung was formulating in the same era could be viewed as an attempt to rationalize and intellectualize the enchantment of the world in myths, beliefs in the supernatural, and so forth.

Jung unwaveringly professed a scientific stance, as did Freud. Making a case for psychoanalysis as a science, Freud defined Weltanschauung (worldview) as “an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis” ([ 23 ], p. 195). Unlike religion, the Weltanschauung of science does not provide final answers. It “too assumes the uniformity of the explanation of the universe; but it does so only as a program, the fulfillment of which is relegated to the future” ([ 23 ], p. 196). Jung took a more categorical view: “A science can never be a Weltanschauung but merely a tool with which to make one” ([ 8 ], par. 731). Therefore “Analytical psychology is not a Weltanschauung but a science, and as such it provides the building-material … with which a Weltanschauung can be built up” ([ 8 ], par. 730).

From the standpoint of behavioral sciences, depth psychology is a Weltanschauung that purports to solve all the mysteries of mind and behavior on the basis of one overriding (and irrefutable) hypothesis; namely, there is an unconscious mind. Could the unconscious be an object for scientific study? Such an object must exist independently of any description or interpretation of it and potentially be knowable in its entirety. Jung recognized the problems inherent in applying those criteria to the study of the psyche. Modern psychology “does not exclude the existence of faith, conviction, and experienced certainties of whatever description, nor does it contest their possible validity,” he pointed out, but “completely lacks the means to prove their validity in the scientific sense” ([ 24 ], par. 384). The dilemma stems from a mismatch between what we may want psychology to do for us (explain matters of faith, etc. ) and what the scientific method permits us to do.

The history of psychology in general could be viewed as an ongoing struggle with that dilemma. Often the “solution” has been to construe what Jung regarded as expressions of the psyche as being epiphenomena of either brain processes or language. As William James vividly put it, scientific thinking regards our private selves like “bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea … their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing” ([ 25 ], p. 495). Yet nevertheless there is the reality of an “unshareable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny,” a feeling that “may be sneered as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete actuality” ([ 25 ], p. 499). Jung could be viewed as endeavoring to formulate a system of concepts towards the systematic description of how that unshareable feeling becomes shareable—not only with other people, but first and foremost with one’s conscious self. It becomes accessible to conscious reflection through spontaneous symbolic representations of subjective states, Jung tells us throughout his works.

4. Perceptions of Jung from the Standpoint of Scientific Psychology

Jung engaged with matters that were central to the formation of psychology as a modern science in the early twentieth century [ 26 ]. His early theory of the complexes, supported by the word association tests [ 27 ], accorded well with the experimental psychology of the day. Piaget still engaged with Jung’s theory in 1946 [ 28 ]; but by then Jung had fallen from grace in his home discipline, psychiatry.

A browse through archives of Nature is illuminating. In a 1942 book review, the reviewer derogatorily labeled the Jungian approach a mystical psychology [ 29 ]. While applauding Jung’s early theory of the complexes as “scientific as any made before or since” in psychiatry, he reflected that Jung subsequently “abandoned his clinical work and most unfortunately started upon the study of religions and myths,” having “forsaken science for religion” ([ 29 ], p. 622). The critic misconstrued what Jung was doing. Jung was trying to explain religion scientifically. Nevertheless, after the word association experiments, the way Jung develops his ideas is not recognizably science as scientists know it. Consequently, even sympathetic critics were ambivalent about how to assess Jung’s contribution to science. In a 1954 review for Nature , Westmann commented that the book in focus (a collection of Jung’s writings) “shows the fundamental weakness of Jung’s psychology, which by having no fixed scheme appears to be full of contradictions and paradoxes; but this weakness is at the same time a sign of his greatness” ([ 30 ], p. 842). He elucidates by citing Heraclitus’s adage that you cannot step twice into the same river, and averring that “the life in the psyche manifests itself thus” ([ 30 ], p. 842). Talking of “life in the psyche” as taken-for-granted locates the speaker in the historical moment when the peculiarly modern Western conception of the self as an atomic unit was at its zenith. That conception has led to postulations of a universal mental structure as a necessity of nature. Jung reasoned, “Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, with a long evolutionary history behind them, so we should expect the mind to be organized in a similar way” ([ 31 ], par. 522). And yet, this inner structure is in constant flux like the proverbial river.

Despite the proliferation of Jungian books in the second half of the twentieth century, there are no more reviews of such books in Nature after 1961 [ 32 ]. Readers of Nature are no longer expected to be interested in a mystical psychology. Contemporary scholars who study Jung are far more likely to be based in the humanities than in the behavioral or social sciences.

Analytical psychology has been thoroughly removed from the scientific gaze. While there are sound reasons for dismissing claims that analytical psychology is scientific [ 5 , 6 ], there are not-so-good reasons, based in ignorance and misconceptions, for dismissing Jung. “We American psychologists are brought up to think of Jung as a mystic” ([ 33 ], p. 34). This applies also to British psychologists; or, rather, we have been brought up to think of Jung as a non-entity. In a typical syllabus, Jung features as a historical footnote to Freud. The Freudian story, which depicts Jung as a dissenting disciple, persisted after the behaviorists had debunked Freudianism. It was retained after behaviorism had given way to cognitivism. By the time that social constructionist critics of cognitivism appeared on the scene, Jungianism was too remote even to criticize. Meanwhile Freud was rediscovered, partially reinvented, by luminaries of postmodernism, and consequently arrived also in some variants of postmodern psychology. Jung remains excluded. Psychologists’ heightened moral and political sensitivities coincided with highly publicized allegations of Jung’s Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism. The allegations are mostly unfounded [ 34 , 35 ], but the scandal has placed Jung off-bounds: “For political reasons I cannot allow myself to read Jung with pleasure,” stated Billig ([ 36 ], p. 6).

Reading Jung is difficult with the best of will. The vast sweep of his eclectic knowledge results in verbose density and opacity. Navigating his voluminous writings inevitably means selecting threads of personal interest. Hence, Jung speaks differently to different readers. While there are books that reliably disseminate Jungian theory at a basic level, any simplification forfeits what historian Pietikäinen has aptly described as the kaleidoscopic nature of Jung’s psychology [ 37 ]. Many Jung-oriented publications have little in common with each other, and some have a dubious relation to Jung’s own work. There is “a profusion of ‘book-length commercials of Jungian therapy” and “pseudo-religious apologetics” ([ 37 ], p. 27). There are also works of academic excellence in analytical psychology; but their content tends to be too esoteric for the uninitiated. All that does not help to make Jung’s work a respectable pursuit for a behavioral scientist.

5. Obstacles to Bringing Jung into the Fold

In and out of academia, “Jung” has become a kind of brand name that can be stamped on a variety of products. Since Jung regarded himself as first and foremost a psychologist, it is ironic that his work is appreciated by psychologists least of all. For the “typical” psychologist, the above barriers to engaging with Jung’s work are compounded by bafflement about what he was doing exactly. Readers of Jung schooled in the humanities may recognize a hermeneutic approach in his interpretation of myths, ancient scripts, and patients’ fantasies and dreams. Traditionally trained academic psychologists are not attuned to such methods. It is not clear how Jung gets from observation to theory. His transition from observing recurrent motifs in clinical and mythological material to a full-blown theory of archetypes is too rapid. He seems to be reading into the material his own expectations about the structure and dynamics of the psyche. Jung’s hypotheses must be taken on faith. Believers see the evidence everywhere, and seem to understand the task of empirical research as a matter of compiling catalogues of instances. It is not the logic of scientific discovery (cf. [ 38 ]; see [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] for an expanded discussion).

Jung talked the talk but didn’t do the walk. For most psychologists, it is primarily the praxis of psychological inquiry that differentiates it from other disciplines that also investigate mind and behavior. To some psychologists, it is not just any methodology but specifically the hypothetico-deductive method that makes it a science . Not all psychologists adhere to it in practice; but historically that classic ideal has dominated the behavioral sciences. The hypothetico-deductive method had been proposed by William Whewell in the nineteenth century, though it was Popper who has given it its best-known articulation [ 38 ]. In the 1930s, Popper contested the then-prevalent viewpoint associated with logical positivism, which regarded inductive reasoning as the basis for scientific inquiries. Induction proceeds from an initial explanation of some observations to its confirmation by collecting further empirical examples. This epistemological sin can be found in Jung’s progression from (a) observing recurrent motifs in dreams, visions, myths, etc. , through (b) theorizing those as archetypal manifestations, to (c) seeking to conform the existence of archetypes by observing more instances of the same.

Despite Jung’s scientific stance, it is difficult to assimilate his ideas into the behavioral sciences not only due to how he went about validating them but also due to a lack of obvious connections with the ongoing preoccupations of the behavioral sciences. Even within Jungian circles, it is far from clear what “archetype” really means—lively debates continue to present day—partly because Jung’s own ideas changed over time [ 39 ]. Brooke attributed the difficulties that “psychologists of other persuasions” have with the concept to the fact that “archetypes seem mysterious, deep, remote, frightening, and enchanting, and thinking about them remains equally murky and ambivalent” ([ 40 ], p. 157). From my position as a non-Jungian psychologist, the problem is not necessarily the murkiness of the concept. There is little certainty at the cutting edge of science. If the concept were to excite scientists, its ramifications would have been explored. Rather, it is the point of postulating archetypes in the first place which eludes us “psychologists of other persuasions”. The very postulation seems redundant, a solution to a non-existing problem, an answer to a question that nobody else is asking.

6. Science versus Art

The concept of archetypes failed to interest behavioral scientists, but has long fired the imagination of artists and literary writers. Jung’s theory is a powerful narrative. It might be correct in the way that a poem or a literary novel is correct; that is, as a whole coherent unto itself, all its elements in perfect relation to each other. A poetic gestalt-image impacts upon us aesthetically and emotionally irrespective of the factual veracity of its content. Whereas science seeks to establish objective truths about the world (and human nature) by narrowing down rival interpretations, the poetic process creates subjective truths through the multiplicity of overlain images and subjective connotations.

Jung uses a similar strategy (cf. [ 41 ]). His hypotheses are speculative explanations—not testable predictions à la Popper—and he builds them by piling examples upon examples. Making a similar point, Hillman commented that Jung uses the word “empirical” to refer to a subjective process within him: “The empirical event—the solar-phallus image in a patient—releases a movement in the mind setting off a hypothesis … as a poem may start in a concrete perception”; and like a poet, “Jung returns ever and again to the concrete world of perceptions (cases, dreams, religious fantasies, ancient texts)” ([ 42 ], p. 32–33).

Jung struggled with the incommensurability of science and art. In a talk on poetry, he asserted his standpoint as a scientist by endorsing the view of the two as mutually exclusive: “Art is by its very nature not science, and science by its very nature is not art” ([ 43 ], par. 99). The conflict came to his awareness in a typically Jungian manner, through a fantasy generated by his unconscious [ 44 ]. In 1913, whilst writing down disturbing fantasies he was having, he wondered, ‘“What is this I am doing, it certainly is not science, what is it?”—and a voice from nowhere told him it was art, a suggestion he strongly resisted though conceding that “obviously it wasn’t science” ([ 44 ], p. 42). The ambivalence carries across to his formal exposition of his theory. Analytical psychology is premised on the hypothesis that the psyche is an autonomous reality commanding specific energy. Yet such hypothesis “has its disadvantages for the scientific mind,” Jung comments; and continues, “In accordance with my empirical attitude I … prefer to describe and explain symbol-formation as a natural process” ([ 45 ], par. 338). His preference discloses a language game in Wittgenstein’s sense (cf. [ 46 ]). Language games are not “games” but profoundly shape attitudes and perceptions. In Jung’s milieu, the language game of science empowered those who came up with theories using words such as instincts, evolution, and energy; and eschewed words such as spirit. Jung labored to disengage his theorizing from religious mystification, seeking instead to explain all psychological phenomena as based in natural processes.

7. Conclusions

Jung’s theory feels as true to some because it sounds scientific; to others it feels as false because it only sounds like that [ 5 ]. This seems like a deadlock of opinions. Instead of pinning the merit of Jung’s legacy on a categorical judgment of scientific/non-scientific status, it may be best to evaluate it in terms of applicability. We should ask, for whom and in what context does it serve particular purposes, and whether those would be served by the scientific method.

The appeal of the Jungian approach in psychotherapy is evident in the worldwide success of the movement, but the clinical utility of particular concepts or techniques is not the same as their potential for generating hypotheses that scientists may explore in pure basic research. As seen, Jung himself made a categorical distinction between analytical psychology and experimental psychology [ 20 ]. Elsewhere, I revisit the implications of the differences between the practitioner’s ethic and the scientist’s ethic for analytical psychology and other contemporary approaches to the self [ 47 ].

Analytical psychology is not monolithic. It has its factions, and those too continuously evolve. Nevertheless, in all its versions, it concerns the holistic inner experience. It provides a way of thinking about and working with inner experiences. Hence, to echo Dilthey, it cannot be adequately served by methods of the natural sciences. Conversely, analytical psychology cannot readily serve a purpose in the behavioral sciences (in my view). It is clearly not a science of behavior in the way that the behaviorists have envisaged it. It is not a science of the mind in the way that cognitive science has been. By labeling it a psychology with the psyche, Jung implicitly positions its practitioner—not as someone who detachedly studies something called a psyche—but as someone trained to apply his or her own psyche as a tool towards trying to fathom how human beings attune themselves to own existence.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft for their helpful comments.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone.  Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us  by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas  by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read  Would Everybody Please Stop?  is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds  by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food,  Longthroat Memoirs  is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails,  Longthroat Memoirs  explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays  by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure  is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours  by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of  The Big Bang Theory  to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as  The Believer ,  The New Yorker , and  Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession  by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to  Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and  Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life  by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience.  Betwixt and Between  is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In  Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays  by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel  is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel,  Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays  by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In  Look Alive Out There,  whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on  Gossip Girl,  befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London  by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir,  Flâneuse  takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such  flâneuses  as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone  by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview,  Idiophone  is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays  by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of  The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of  Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel  Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s  Sunshine State  uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day  by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day  is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life  by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in  A Really Big Lunch . From the titular  New Yorker  piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from  Brick ,  Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews,  A Really Big Lunch  is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.  A Really Big Lunch  is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out  by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays  by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and  Grand Theft Auto  to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays  by Samantha Irby

“With  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America  by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In  This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection  Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays  by Scaachi Koul

“In  One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions  by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation,  Tell Me How It Ends  (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers  by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays  by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s  Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America  by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life  by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by  Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments  by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead  Rolling Stone  to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman  by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis,  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud  will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist  by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls  by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues,  Shrewed  is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays  by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition  by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber),  Double Bind  could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life  by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery,  The Destiny Thief  reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s  Karma Cola  and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s  Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness  by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology.  The River of Consciousness  is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God)  by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing  is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America  by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else.  We Wear the Mask , edited by  Brando Skyhorse  and  Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to  The New Yorker  and the  New York Review of Books  on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions  by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller  Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays  by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms  by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes,  A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays  by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico.  Acid West  illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening,  Acid West  is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies  by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives.  Sexographies  is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative  by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays  by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This?  presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

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Behavior and Mind: The Roots of Modern Psychology Essay

Article summary, article critique.

The article “Behavior and Mind: The Roots of Modern Psychology” by Dennis Delprato is a book review that analyses the ideas of Rachlin on contemporary psychology. Delprato states that Rachlin placed the modern psychological sciences into two categories i.e. cognitive or physiological psychology and teleological behaviorism or behavior analysis (Delprato, 1995). The aim of cognitive psychology is to unravel internal mental mechanisms, while teleological behaviorism seeks to explain, predict, and control visible behavior. Delprato states that the main argument made by Rachlin in his book is that these two branches of psychology are compatible, contrary to the popular opinion that these two branches are different (Delprato, 1995).

Rachlin argues that teleological behaviorism or behavioral analysis studies mental life, while cognitive psychology and other non-behavioral branches of psychology study mental mechanisms. Hence, behavior analysis that studies mental life is linked to cognitive psychology, a science that studies mental mechanisms. Rachlin’s argument is derived from the way Aristotle differentiated efficient and final causes. He also based his argument on the premise that each category of cause explains different aspects of an organism’s behavior (Delprato, 1995). Rachlin strongly objects the views of B.F Skinner, a proponent of cognitive psychology, and he proceeds to argue that cognitive psychology can only make sense if it is viewed as a science investigating efficient causes. In this statement, Rachlin meant that physiological and cognitive psychology tries to understand why an organism behaves, feels and thinks in certain ways (Delprato, 1995).

When Rachlin talks about efficient causes, he is making reference to cause-effect relations among psychological concepts such as cognitive maps, internal impulses and neural activity. Rachlin seems to propose that psychology should be considered a science of final causes. Both behavior analysis and cognitive psychology are needed in explaining behavior (Delprato, 1995). Rachlin uses different explanations to demonstrate that behavioral and cognitive psychology may be reconciled. Rachlin also considers mentality to be just abstractions obtained from temporally overt behavior patterns, and not internal thinking. He disagrees with the views held by dual psychologists like B.F Skinner, who differentiates between observed behavior (overt) and hidden behavior (covert). The main idea that Rachlin strongly objects is that of private or covert psychological events (Delprato, 1995).

To demonstrate the limitation of covert psychological events in explaining behavior, Rachlin uses the example of pain. He argues that pain is considered an overt behavior, but in real sense, there are certain types of pain that can only be felt by an individual experiencing them (Delprato, 1995). In summary, Delprato supports Rachlin’s idea that behavioral and cognitive psychology should not be viewed as different entities. Instead, these two branches of psychology should be integrated to make psychology a science that investigates cause-effect relationships.

The article by Dennis Delprato is a book review and a secondary research. The research method used by the author is analysis, whereby he analyzes Rachlin’s ideas on behavioral and cognitive psychology. The article does not have elaborate research methods or designs like the ones used in primary research. It also does not have subjects/participants, materials or procedure. The main conclusion Delprato makes after reviewing and analyzing Rachlin’s ideas is that behavioral and cognitive psychology may be integrated or merged to better explain human behavior. Cognitive and behavioral psychologists disagreed on the best way of explaining behavior.

Cognitive psychologists argue that behavior is best explained through covert mental processes, whereby human behavior is believed to be entirely determined by mental processes i.e. our thoughts determines our actions. On the contrary, behavioral psychologists argue that human behavior can be best explained by observable characteristics. Behaviorists believe that the environment is the most influential element that determines the way humans behave. According to this approach, human behavior is a result of responding to certain stimuli emanating from the environment. In his conclusion, Delprato argues that none of these psychological approaches offers the best explanation of human behavior. However, if cognitive and behavioral psychologies are integrated, the two can offer the best explanation of human behavior.

The independent variables in this study are cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology; dependent variable is behavior as human behavior depends on the psychological approach adopted. Hence, behavior is a variable that depends on either cognitive or behavioral psychology. The variables were measured by outlining the characteristics that define them. For example, the reliance on overt traits by behavioral psychologists in explaining behavior was distinguished from the covert approach used by cognitive psychologists that emphasize on internal mental processes. The study was more of a correlation secondary research because it sought to establish the relationship between cognitive and behavioral psychology.

The study cannot be experimental because experimental research seeks to establish cause-effect relationship among variables. Moreover, experimental studies take the form of primary research with participants/subject placed in a controlled environment where certain variables are manipulated. This study was a book review and a secondary research. In secondary studies, there are few ethical considerations that a researcher needs to take into account. In some cases, secondary research has no ethical consideration. Sometimes a researcher is required to obtain consent or permission before conducting an analysis of another person’s work. The ethical consideration in secondary research also depends on the kind of data that one will be analyzing. For example, consent is required when conducting secondary analysis of documents such as court reports, hospital records, school reports, and archival documents.

The document analyzed by Delprato was a book, and there were no significant ethical considerations involved because any reader is allowed to conduct a book review. Delprato’s conclusions matched his findings because he agreed with Rachlin’s idea that cognitive and behavioral psychology should be integrated to provide the best explanation of human behavior. The limitation of this study is that it only used secondary data without conducting any primary research. Moreover, in his analysis Delprato considered only the views of a single author.

To make this research more credible, Delprato may have consulted the works of different scholars on how cognitive and behavioral psychology may be integrated. He may have also included views from scholars who strongly oppose the idea that cognitive and behavioral psychology that appears to contrast each other in methods of investigation may be integrated. This study may also have been more credible if it was conducted in form of a primary research, as this may have enabled the researcher to collect and analyze data, and determine whether behavioral and cognitive psychology are really compatible. Another study that may be done on the topic “Behavior and Mind: The Roots of Modern Psychology” is identifying the ways in which behavioral and cognitive psychology compliment each other.

Delprato, D.J. (1995). Behavior and Mind: The Roots of Modern Psychology. The Psychological Record, 45 (2), 325+.

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4 Contemporary Psychology

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Appreciate the diversity of interests and foci within psychology
• Understand basic interests and applications in each of the described areas of psychology
• Demonstrate familiarity with some of the major concepts or important figures in each of the described areas of psychology

Contemporary psychology is a diverse field that is influenced by all of the historical perspectives described in the preceding section. Reflective of the discipline’s diversity is the diversity seen within the  American Psychological Association (APA) . The APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the United States. The APA is the largest organization of psychologists in the world, and its mission is to advance and disseminate psychological knowledge for the betterment of people. There are 56 divisions within the APA, representing a wide variety of specialties that range from Societies for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality to Exercise and Sport Psychology to Behavioural Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. Reflecting the diversity of the field of psychology itself, members, affiliate members, and associate members span the spectrum from students to doctoral-level psychologists, and come from a variety of places including educational settings, criminal justice, hospitals, the armed forces, and industry (American Psychological Association, 2014). G. Stanley Hall was the first president of the APA. Before he earned his doctoral degree, he was an adjunct instructor at Wilberforce University, a historically black college/university (HBCU), while serving as faculty at Antioch College. Hall went on to work under William James, earning his PhD. Eventually, he became the first president of Clark University in Massachusetts when it was founded (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010).

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) was founded in 1988 and seeks to advance the scientific orientation of psychology. Its founding resulted from disagreements between members of the scientific and clinical branches of psychology within the APA. The APS publishes five research journals and engages in education and advocacy with funding agencies. A significant proportion of its members are international, although the majority is located in the United States. Other organizations provide networking and collaboration opportunities for professionals of several ethnic or racial groups working in psychology, such as the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA), the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA), the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), and the Society of Indian Psychologists (SIP). Most of these groups are also dedicated to studying psychological and social issues within their specific communities.

This section will provide an overview of the major subdivisions within psychology today in the order in which they are introduced throughout the remainder of this textbook. This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing, but it will provide insight into the major areas of research and practice of modern-day psychologists.

LINK TO LEARNING

Please visit  this  website about the divisions within the APA  to learn more.

View these  student resources  also provided by the APA.

Biopsychology and Evolutionary Psychology

As the name suggests,  biopsychology  explores how our biology influences our behaviour. While biological psychology is a broad field, many biological psychologists want to understand how the structure and function of the nervous system is related to behaviour ( Figure IP.11 ). As such, they often combine the research strategies of both psychologists and physiologists to accomplish this goal (as discussed in Carlson, 2013).

The research interests of biological psychologists span a number of domains, including but not limited to, sensory and motor systems, sleep, drug use and abuse, ingestive behaviour, reproductive behaviour, neurodevelopment, plasticity of the nervous system, and biological correlates of psychological disorders. Given the broad areas of interest falling under the purview of biological psychology, it will probably come as no surprise that individuals from all sorts of backgrounds are involved in this research, including biologists, medical professionals, physiologists, and chemists. This interdisciplinary approach is often referred to as neuroscience, of which biological psychology is a component (Carlson, 2013).

While biopsychology typically focuses on the immediate causes of behaviour based in the physiology of a human or other animal, evolutionary psychology seeks to study the ultimate biological causes of behaviour. To the extent that a behaviour is impacted by genetics, a behaviour, like any anatomical characteristic of a human or animal, will demonstrate adaption to its surroundings. These surroundings include the physical environment and, since interactions between organisms can be important to survival and reproduction, the social environment. The study of behaviour in the context of evolution has its origins with Charles Darwin, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was well aware that behaviours should be adaptive and wrote books titled,  The Descent of Man  (1871) and  The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals  (1872), to explore this field.

Evolutionary psychology, and specifically, the  evolutionary psychology  of humans, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades. To be subject to evolution by natural selection, a behaviour must have a significant genetic cause. In general, we expect all human cultures to express a behaviour if it is caused genetically, since the genetic differences among human groups are small. The approach taken by most evolutionary psychologists is to predict the outcome of a behaviour in a particular situation based on evolutionary theory and then to make observations, or conduct experiments, to determine whether the results match the theory. It is important to recognize that these types of studies are not strong evidence that a behaviour is adaptive, since they lack information that the behaviour is in some part genetic and not entirely cultural (Endler, 1986). Demonstrating that a trait, especially in humans, is naturally selected is extraordinarily difficult; perhaps for this reason, some evolutionary psychologists are content to assume the behaviours they study have genetic determinants (Confer et al., 2010).

One other drawback of evolutionary psychology is that the traits that we possess now evolved under environmental and social conditions far back in human history, and we have a poor understanding of what these conditions were. This makes predictions about what is adaptive for a behaviour difficult. Behavioural traits need not be adaptive under current conditions, only under the conditions of the past when they evolved, about which we can only hypothesize.

There are many areas of human behaviour for which evolution can make predictions. Examples include memory, mate choice, relationships between kin, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status (Confer et al., 2010).

Evolutionary psychologists have had success in finding experimental correspondence between observations and expectations. In one example, in a study of mate preference differences between men and women that spanned 37 cultures, Buss (1989) found that women valued earning potential factors greater than men, and men valued potential reproductive factors (youth and attractiveness) greater than women in their prospective mates. In general, the predictions were in line with the predictions of evolution, although there were deviations in some cultures.

Sensation and Perception

Scientists interested in both physiological aspects of sensory systems as well as in the psychological experience of sensory information work within the area of  sensation  and  perception  ( Figure IP.12 ). As such, sensation and perception research is also quite interdisciplinary. Imagine walking between buildings as you move from one class to another. You are inundated with sights, sounds, touch sensations, and smells. You also experience the temperature of the air around you and maintain your balance as you make your way. These are all factors of interest to someone working in the domain of sensation and perception.

As described in a later chapter that focuses on the results of studies in sensation and perception, our experience of our world is not as simple as the sum total of all of the sensory information (or sensations) together. Rather, our experience (or perception) is complex and is influenced by where we focus our attention, our previous experiences, and even our cultural backgrounds.

Cognitive Psychology

As mentioned in the previous section, the cognitive revolution created an impetus for psychologists to focus their attention on better understanding the mind and mental processes that underlie behaviour. Thus,  cognitive psychology  is the area of psychology that focuses on studying cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationship to our experiences and our actions. Like biological psychology, cognitive psychology is broad in its scope and often involves collaborations among people from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds. This has led some to coin the term cognitive science to describe the interdisciplinary nature of this area of research (Miller, 2003).

Cognitive psychologists have research interests that span a spectrum of topics, ranging from attention to problem solving to language to memory. The approaches used in studying these topics are equally diverse. Given such diversity, cognitive psychology is not captured in one chapter of this text per se; rather, various concepts related to cognitive psychology will be covered in relevant portions of the chapters in this text on sensation and perception, thinking and intelligence, memory, lifespan development, social psychology, and therapy.

Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology  is the scientific study of development across a lifespan. Developmental psychologists are interested in processes related to physical maturation. However, their focus is not limited to the physical changes associated with aging, as they also focus on changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social behaviour, and other psychological attributes.

Early developmental psychologists focused primarily on changes that occurred through reaching adulthood, providing enormous insight into the differences in physical, cognitive, and social capacities that exist between very young children and adults. For instance, research by Jean  Piaget  ( Figure IP.13 ) demonstrated that very young children do not demonstrate object permanence. Object permanence refers to the understanding that physical things continue to exist, even if they are hidden from us. If you were to show an adult a toy, and then hide it behind a curtain, the adult knows that the toy still exists. However, very young infants act as if a hidden object no longer exists. The age at which object permanence is achieved is somewhat controversial (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, and Siegler, 1997).

While Piaget was focused on cognitive changes during infancy and childhood as we move to adulthood, there is an increasing interest in extending research into the changes that occur much later in life. This may be reflective of changing population demographics of developed nations as a whole. As more and more people live longer lives, the number of people of advanced age will continue to increase. Indeed, it is estimated that there were just over 40 million people aged 65 or older living in the United States in 2010. However, by 2020, this number is expected to increase to about 55 million. By the year 2050, it is estimated that nearly 90 million people in this country will be 65 or older (Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.).

Personality Psychology

Personality psychology  focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviours that make each individual unique. Several individuals (e.g., Freud and Maslow) that we have already discussed in our historical overview of psychology, and the American psychologist Gordon Allport, contributed to early theories of personality. These early theorists attempted to explain how an individual’s personality develops from their given perspective. For example, Freud proposed that personality arose as conflicts between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind were carried out over the lifespan. Specifically, Freud theorized that an individual went through various psychosexual stages of development. According to Freud, adult personality would result from the resolution of various conflicts that centred on the migration of erogenous (or sexual pleasure-producing) zones from the oral (mouth) to the anus to the phallus to the genitals. Like many of Freud’s theories, this particular idea was controversial and did not lend itself to experimental tests (Person, 1980).

More recently, the study of personality has taken on a more quantitative approach. Rather than explaining how personality arises, research is focused on identifying  personality traits , measuring these traits, and determining how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation. Personality traits are relatively consistent patterns of thought and behaviour, and many have proposed that five trait dimensions are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals. These five dimensions are known as the “Big Five” or the  Five Factor model , and include dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion ( Figure IP.14 ). Each of these traits has been demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan (e.g., Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt, Pulkinnen, and Kokko, 2007; Soldz & Vaillant, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 2008) and is influenced by genetics (e.g., Jang, Livesly, and Vernon, 1996).

Social Psychology

Social psychology  focuses on how we interact with and relate to others. Social psychologists conduct research on a wide variety of topics that include differences in how we explain our own behaviour versus how we explain the behaviours of others, prejudice, and attraction, and how we resolve interpersonal conflicts. Social psychologists have also sought to determine how being among other people changes our own behaviour and patterns of thinking.

There are many interesting examples of social psychological research, and you will read about many of these in a later chapter of this textbook. Until then, you will be introduced to one of the most controversial psychological studies ever conducted. Stanley  Milgram  was an American social psychologist who is most famous for research that he conducted on obedience. After the holocaust, in 1961, a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was accused of committing mass atrocities, was put on trial. Many people wondered how German soldiers were capable of torturing prisoners in concentration camps, and they were unsatisfied with the excuses given by soldiers that they were simply following orders. At the time, most psychologists agreed that few people would be willing to inflict such extraordinary pain and suffering, simply because they were obeying orders. Milgram decided to conduct research to determine whether or not this was true ( Figure IP.15 ). As you will read later in the text, Milgram found that nearly two-thirds of his participants were willing to deliver what they believed to be lethal shocks to another person, simply because they were instructed to do so by an authority figure (in this case, a man dressed in a lab coat). This was in spite of the fact that participants received payment for simply showing up for the research study and could have chosen not to inflict pain or more serious consequences on another person by withdrawing from the study. No one was actually hurt or harmed in any way, Milgram’s experiment was a clever ruse that took advantage of research confederates, those who pretend to be participants in a research study who are actually working for the researcher and have clear, specific directions on how to behave during the research study (Hock, 2009). Milgram’s and others’ studies that involved deception and potential emotional harm to study participants catalyzed the development of ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research that discourage the use of deception of research subjects, unless it can be argued not to cause harm and, in general, requiring informed consent of participants.

Industrial-Organizational psychology  (I-O psychology) is a subfield of psychology that applies psychological theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings. I-O psychologists are often involved in issues related to personnel management, organizational structure, and workplace environment. Businesses often seek the aid of I-O psychologists to make the best hiring decisions as well as to create an environment that results in high levels of employee productivity and efficiency. In addition to its applied nature, I-O psychology also involves conducting scientific research on behaviour within I-O settings (Riggio, 2013).

Health Psychology

Health psychology  focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. This particular approach is known as the  biopsychosocial model   ( Figure IP.16 ). Health psychologists are interested in helping individuals achieve better health through public policy, education, intervention, and research. Health psychologists might conduct research that explores the relationship between one’s genetic makeup, patterns of behaviour, relationships, psychological stress, and health. They may research effective ways to motivate people to address patterns of behaviour that contribute to poorer health (MacDonald, 2013).

Sport and Exercise Psychology

Researchers in  sport and exercise psychology   study the psychological aspects of sport performance, including motivation and performance anxiety, and the effects of sport on mental and emotional wellbeing. Research is also conducted on similar topics as they relate to physical exercise in general. The discipline also includes topics that are broader than sport and exercise but that are related to interactions between mental and physical performance under demanding conditions, such as fire fighting, military operations, artistic performance, and surgery.

Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychology   is the area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behaviour. As such, it is generally considered to be a more applied area within psychology; however, some clinicians are also actively engaged in scientific research.  Counselling psychology  is a similar discipline that focuses on emotional, social, vocational, and health-related outcomes in individuals who are considered psychologically healthy.

As mentioned earlier, both Freud and Rogers provided perspectives that have been influential in shaping how clinicians interact with people seeking psychotherapy. While aspects of the psychoanalytic theory are still found among some of today’s therapists who are trained from a psychodynamic perspective, Roger’s ideas about client-centred  therapy  have been especially influential in shaping how many clinicians operate. Furthermore, both behaviourism and the cognitive revolution have shaped clinical practice in the forms of behavioural therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioural therapy ( Figure IP.17 ). Issues related to the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and problematic patterns of behaviour will be discussed in detail in later chapters of this textbook.

By far, this is the area of psychology that receives the most attention in popular media, and many people mistakenly assume that all psychology is clinical psychology.

Forensic Psychology

Forensic psychology   is a branch of psychology that deals questions of psychology as they arise in the context of the justice system. For example, forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists) will assess a person’s competency to stand trial, assess the state of mind of a defendant, act as consultants on child custody cases, consult on sentencing and treatment recommendations, and advise on issues such as eyewitness testimony and children’s testimony (American Board of Forensic Psychology, 2014). In these capacities, they will typically act as expert witnesses, called by either side in a court case to provide their research- or experience-based opinions. As expert witnesses, forensic psychologists must have a good understanding of the law and provide information in the context of the legal system rather than just within the realm of psychology. Forensic psychologists are also used in the jury selection process and witness preparation. They may also be involved in providing psychological treatment within the criminal justice system. Criminal profilers are a relatively small proportion of psychologists that act as consultants to law enforcement.

Introduction to Psychology & Neuroscience by Edited by Leanne Stevens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Contemporary Psychology

            Suicide bombing, a major terror strategy employed in terrorism is, if not the most, one of the most gruesome acts anybody can commit. It is outright crazy and stupid. One must be beside the normal to be entertaining such a thought in mind. Ironically, fanatics who have committed and attempted suicide bombings in the past, were deemed normal until the day when the execution of their ultimate plans were made public whether foiled or completed. People who are afflicted with mental disorder may, as other people, travel for the same reasons – vacation, visiting friends or relatives, business, recreation, and sometimes for religious or spiritual focus (Miller & Zarcone, 1968). Others indeed may travel for reasons other than the normal – for reasons triggered by malformed mental state such as the men who carried out the 911 attack of the Twin Towers in New York. Along the 911 attack, suicide bombing through aircraft came to prominence resulting in the stirring of the awareness among the international public of the fact that the regular traveler might not be that “regular” anyway. It is probable that some of them are driven by excessive anger or motivated by utopic hope as taught in the communities wherein they have pledged their life allegiance (Silke, 2003).

            The majority of theories and models of human behavior fall into one of two basic categories: internal perspective and external perspective. The internal perspective considers the factors inside the person to understand behavior. People who subscribe to this view understand behavior as psychodynamically oriented. Behavior is explained in terms of the thoughts, feelings, past experiences and needs of the individual. The internal processes of thinking, feeling, perceiving and judging lead people to act in specific ways. Both the motivational and biological influences are best explained through this internal perspective and the issue at hand (i.e., terrorism and people behind this) is examined via this channel. This internal perspective implies that people are best understood from the inside and that people’s behavior is best interpreted after understanding their thoughts and feelings (Jourad, 1963).

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            The other category of theories takes an external perspective. This focuses on factors outside the person to understand behavior. External events, consequences of behavior, environmental forces to which a person is subject, are emphasized by this external perspective. The developmental influence hence, is part of this external perspective. A person’s history, value system, feelings and thoughts are not very important in interpreting actions and behavior. Kurt Lewin for instance considered both perspectives in saying that behavior is a function of both the person and the environment (Tiffin,& McCormick, 1958).

            Man is a social being and as such his personality is viewed from the society and culture where he belongs. A society represents a geographical aggregate and has boundaries, similar government or a group of persons in meaningful interaction and engaged in social relationship. Personality is the individualizing traits of man which constitute his singularity and differentiate him from any other human being. The three determinants of personality: 1] biological heritage which has direct influence on the development of personality. This includes musculature, the nervous system, and the glands; 2] E.Q. factor describes qualities like understanding one’s feelings, empathy for the feelings of others, and the “regulation of emotion in a way that enhances living (Gibbs, 1995);” 3] environmental factors. Taking everything normal, environment plays an important role in personality development. Environmental factors are cultural environment, social environment, home and family, culture, status and role and social agent (Silke, 2003).

            Many of men’s pronounced stirred-up state of mind such as fear, anger, disgust, and contempt, have posed the question, why? What has caused such a reaction? What has brought a change to his/her behavior? What is the frustration that has brought about such behavior? In the world of a suicide bomber, he/she contemplates on various input or stimuli from the world he/she evolves in. There are frustrations of every form and even without these, his/her psyche or mental state functions on the basis of anything he/she receives (actively or passively) from the milieu. Life’s problems are numerous and as long as one is alive and kicking he will always be faced with problems, be they big or small. Such problems stir-up one’s emotions or feelings which maybe pleasant or unpleasant. Physiological problems, environmental problems, personal deficiencies and psychological concerns bring on a variety of responses; some predictable, others are not. Disorganization of family life, disintegration of personality brought about by depression, great personal suffering, any of these may take any person beyond the limits of his tolerance. Man is born in a social environment surrounded by cultural norms and values. He is faced with cultural taboos and acceptable social behavior. Numerous environmental factors come to the fore which may or may not be easily overcome. One of the most difficult problems in this area is one’s cultural dos and don’ts. Environmental frustrations cannot be avoided, for there are always certain factors in a person’s growth and achievement. Psychological or internal problems are the most difficult to resolve as they are within the inner feelings of a person. One may not be able to detect his/her concerns/anxieties through his /her overt behavior. It may only be inferred from what his/her inner thoughts and feelings are but will not know what caused such a feeling. Terrorism can thus be seen through the eyes of one who understands the dynamics of personality, the influences of family, religion and community; whether the latter come in the form of political affiliations or other social adherences (Silke, 2003).

Gibbs, Nancy. 1995. “EQ Factor” Time International, October. Jourad, Sydney, 1963. Personal Adjustment. 2nd Ed.  New York: MacMillan Company. Miller, W. B. & Zarcone, V. (1968) Psychiatric behaviour disorders at an international airport. Archives of Environmental Health, 17, 360 -365. Silke, A. 2003. The psychology of suicide terrorism. In Terrorists, Victims and Society (ed. A. Silke), pp. 93 -108. Chichester: Wiley. Tiffin, Joseph and Ernest McCormick J. 1958. Industrial psychology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.

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1.4: Contemporary Psychology

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Learning Objectives

• Appreciate the diversity of interests and foci within psychology
• Understand basic interests and applications in each of the described areas of psychology
• Demonstrate familiarity with some of the major concepts or important figures in each of the described areas of psychology

Contemporary psychology is a diverse field that is influenced by all of the historical perspectives described in the preceding section. Reflective of the discipline’s diversity is the diversity seen within the American Psychological Association (APA) . The APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the United States. The APA is the largest organization of psychologists in the world, and its mission is to advance and disseminate psychological knowledge for the betterment of people. There are \(56\) divisions within the APA, representing a wide variety of specialties that range from Societies for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality to Exercise and Sport Psychology to Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. Reflecting the diversity of the field of psychology itself, members, affiliate members, and associate members span the spectrum from students to doctoral-level psychologists, and come from a variety of places including educational settings, criminal justice, hospitals, the armed forces, and industry (American Psychological Association, 2014). The Association for Psychological Science (APS) was founded in 1988 and seeks to advance the scientific orientation of psychology. Its founding resulted from disagreements between members of the scientific and clinical branches of psychology within the APA. The APS publishes five research journals and engages in education and advocacy with funding agencies. A significant proportion of its members are international, although the majority is located in the United States. Other organizations provide networking and collaboration opportunities for professionals of several ethnic or racial groups working in psychology, such as the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA), the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA), the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), and the Society of Indian Psychologists (SIP). Most of these groups are also dedicated to studying psychological and social issues within their specific communities.

This section will provide an overview of the major subdivisions within psychology today in the order in which they are introduced throughout the remainder of this textbook. This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing, but it will provide insight into the major areas of research and practice of modern-day psychologists.

BIOPSYCHOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

As the name suggests, biopsychology explores how our biology influences our behavior. While biological psychology is a broad field, many biological psychologists want to understand how the structure and function of the nervous system is related to behavior. As such, they often combine the research strategies of both psychologists and physiologists to accomplish this goal (as discussed in Carlson, 2013).

The research interests of biological psychologists span a number of domains, including but not limited to, sensory and motor systems, sleep, drug use and abuse, ingestive behavior, reproductive behavior, neurodevelopment, plasticity of the nervous system, and biological correlates of psychological disorders. Given the broad areas of interest falling under the purview of biological psychology, it will probably come as no surprise that individuals from all sorts of backgrounds are involved in this research, including biologists, medical professionals, physiologists, and chemists. This interdisciplinary approach is often referred to as neuroscience, of which biological psychology is a component (Carlson, 2013).

While biopsychology typically focuses on the immediate causes of behavior based in the physiology of a human or other animal, evolutionary psychology seeks to study the ultimate biological causes of behavior. To the extent that a behavior is impacted by genetics, a behavior, like any anatomical characteristic of a human or animal, will demonstrate adaption to its surroundings. These surroundings include the physical environment and, since interactions between organisms can be important to survival and reproduction, the social environment. The study of behavior in the context of evolution has its origins with Charles Darwin, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was well aware that behaviors should be adaptive and wrote books titled, The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), to explore this field.

Evolutionary psychology, and specifically, the evolutionary psychology of humans, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades. To be subject to evolution by natural selection, a behavior must have a significant genetic cause. In general, we expect all human cultures to express a behavior if it is caused genetically, since the genetic differences among human groups are small. The approach taken by most evolutionary psychologists is to predict the outcome of a behavior in a particular situation based on evolutionary theory and then to make observations, or conduct experiments, to determine whether the results match the theory. It is important to recognize that these types of studies are not strong evidence that a behavior is adaptive, since they lack information that the behavior is in some part genetic and not entirely cultural (Endler, 1986). Demonstrating that a trait, especially in humans, is naturally selected is extraordinarily difficult; perhaps for this reason, some evolutionary psychologists are content to assume the behaviors they study have genetic determinants (Confer et al., 2010).

One other drawback of evolutionary psychology is that the traits that we possess now evolved under environmental and social conditions far back in human history, and we have a poor understanding of what these conditions were. This makes predictions about what is adaptive for a behavior difficult. Behavioral traits need not be adaptive under current conditions, only under the conditions of the past when they evolved, about which we can only hypothesize.

There are many areas of human behavior for which evolution can make predictions. Examples include memory, mate choice, relationships between kin, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status (Confer et al., 2010).

Evolutionary psychologists have had success in finding experimental correspondence between observations and expectations. In one example, in a study of mate preference differences between men and women that spanned \(37\) cultures, Buss (1989) found that women valued earning potential factors greater than men, and men valued potential reproductive factors (youth and attractiveness) greater than women in their prospective mates. In general, the predictions were in line with the predictions of evolution, although there were deviations in some cultures.

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Scientists interested in both physiological aspects of sensory systems as well as in the psychological experience of sensory information work within the area of sensation and perception . As such, sensation and perception research is also quite interdisciplinary. Imagine walking between buildings as you move from one class to another. You are inundated with sights, sounds, touch sensations, and smells. You also experience the temperature of the air around you and maintain your balance as you make your way. These are all factors of interest to someone working in the domain of sensation and perception.

As described in a later chapter that focuses on the results of studies in sensation and perception, our experience of our world is not as simple as the sum total of all of the sensory information (or sensations) together. Rather, our experience (or perception) is complex and is influenced by where we focus our attention, our previous experiences, and even our cultural backgrounds.

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

As mentioned in the previous section, the cognitive revolution created an impetus for psychologists to focus their attention on better understanding the mind and mental processes that underlie behavior. Thus, cognitive psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on studying cognition, or thoughts, and their relationship to our experiences and our actions. Like biological psychology, cognitive psychology is broad in its scope and often involves collaborations among people from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds. This has led some to coin the term cognitive science to describe the interdisciplinary nature of this area of research (Miller, 2003).

Cognitive psychologists have research interests that span a spectrum of topics, ranging from attention to problem solving to language to memory. The approaches used in studying these topics are equally diverse. Given such diversity, cognitive psychology is not captured in one chapter of this text per se; rather, various concepts related to cognitive psychology will be covered in relevant portions of the chapters in this text on sensation and perception, thinking and intelligence, memory, lifespan development, social psychology, and therapy.

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of development across a lifespan. Developmental psychologists are interested in processes related to physical maturation. However, their focus is not limited to the physical changes associated with aging, as they also focus on changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social behavior, and other psychological attributes.

Early developmental psychologists focused primarily on changes that occurred through reaching adulthood, providing enormous insight into the differences in physical, cognitive, and social capacities that exist between very young children and adults. For instance, research by Jean Piaget demonstrated that very young children do not demonstrate object permanence. Object permanence refers to the understanding that physical things continue to exist, even if they are hidden from us. If you were to show an adult a toy, and then hide it behind a curtain, the adult knows that the toy still exists. However, very young infants act as if a hidden object no longer exists. The age at which object permanence is achieved is somewhat controversial (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, and Siegler, 1997).

While Piaget was focused on cognitive changes during infancy and childhood as we move to adulthood, there is an increasing interest in extending research into the changes that occur much later in life. This may be reflective of changing population demographics of developed nations as a whole. As more and more people live longer lives, the number of people of advanced age will continue to increase. Indeed, it is estimated that there were just over \(40\) million people aged \(65\) or older living in the United States in 2010. However, by 2020, this number is expected to increase to about \(55\) million. By the year 2050, it is estimated that nearly \(90\) million people in this country will be \(65\) or older (Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.).

PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

Personality psychology focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique. Several individuals (e.g., Freud and Maslow) that we have already discussed in our historical overview of psychology, and the American psychologist Gordon Allport, contributed to early theories of personality. These early theorists attempted to explain how an individual’s personality develops from his or her given perspective. For example, Freud proposed that personality arose as conflicts between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind were carried out over the lifespan. Specifically, Freud theorized that an individual went through various psychosexual stages of development. According to Freud, adult personality would result from the resolution of various conflicts that centered on the migration of erogenous (or sexual pleasure-producing) zones from the oral (mouth) to the anus to the phallus to the genitals. Like many of Freud’s theories, this particular idea was controversial and did not lend itself to experimental tests (Person, 1980).

More recently, the study of personality has taken on a more quantitative approach. Rather than explaining how personality arises, research is focused on identifying personality traits , measuring these traits, and determining how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation. Personality traits are relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior, and many have proposed that five trait dimensions are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals. These five dimensions are known as the “Big Five” or the Five Factor model , and include dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion (Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)). Each of these traits has been demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan (e.g., Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt, Pulkinnen, and Kokko, 2007; Soldz & Vaillant, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 2008) and is influenced by genetics (e.g., Jang, Livesly, and Vernon, 1996).

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social psychology focuses on how we interact with and relate to others. Social psychologists conduct research on a wide variety of topics that include differences in how we explain our own behavior versus how we explain the behaviors of others, prejudice, and attraction, and how we resolve interpersonal conflicts. Social psychologists have also sought to determine how being among other people changes our own behavior and patterns of thinking.

There are many interesting examples of social psychological research, and you will read about many of these in a later chapter of this textbook. Until then, you will be introduced to one of the most controversial psychological studies ever conducted. Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist who is most famous for research that he conducted on obedience. After the holocaust, in 1961, a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was accused of committing mass atrocities, was put on trial. Many people wondered how German soldiers were capable of torturing prisoners in concentration camps, and they were unsatisfied with the excuses given by soldiers that they were simply following orders. At the time, most psychologists agreed that few people would be willing to inflict such extraordinary pain and suffering, simply because they were obeying orders. Milgram decided to conduct research to determine whether or not this was true (Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\)). As you will read later in the text, Milgram found that nearly two-thirds of his participants were willing to deliver what they believed to be lethal shocks to another person, simply because they were instructed to do so by an authority figure (in this case, a man dressed in a lab coat). This was in spite of the fact that participants received payment for simply showing up for the research study and could have chosen not to inflict pain or more serious consequences on another person by withdrawing from the study. No one was actually hurt or harmed in any way, Milgram’s experiment was a clever ruse that took advantage of research confederates, those who pretend to be participants in a research study who are actually working for the researcher and have clear, specific directions on how to behave during the research study (Hock, 2009). Milgram’s and others’ studies that involved deception and potential emotional harm to study participants catalyzed the development of ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research that discourage the use of deception of research subjects, unless it can be argued not to cause harm and, in general, requiring informed consent of participants.

INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O psychology) is a subfield of psychology that applies psychological theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings. I-O psychologists are often involved in issues related to personnel management, organizational structure, and workplace environment. Businesses often seek the aid of I-O psychologists to make the best hiring decisions as well as to create an environment that results in high levels of employee productivity and efficiency. In addition to its applied nature, I-O psychology also involves conducting scientific research on behavior within I-O settings (Riggio, 2013).

HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

Health psychology focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. This particular approach is known as the biopsychosocial model (Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)). Health psychologists are interested in helping individuals achieve better health through public policy, education, intervention, and research. Health psychologists might conduct research that explores the relationship between one’s genetic makeup, patterns of behavior, relationships, psychological stress, and health. They may research effective ways to motivate people to address patterns of behavior that contribute to poorer health (MacDonald, 2013).

SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY

Researchers in sport and exercise psychology study the psychological aspects of sport performance, including motivation and performance anxiety, and the effects of sport on mental and emotional wellbeing. Research is also conducted on similar topics as they relate to physical exercise in general. The discipline also includes topics that are broader than sport and exercise but that are related to interactions between mental and physical performance under demanding conditions, such as fire fighting, military operations, artistic performance, and surgery.

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Clinical psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior. As such, it is generally considered to be a more applied area within psychology; however, some clinicians are also actively engaged in scientific research. Counseling psychology is a similar discipline that focuses on emotional, social, vocational, and health-related outcomes in individuals who are considered psychologically healthy.

As mentioned earlier, both Freud and Rogers provided perspectives that have been influential in shaping how clinicians interact with people seeking psychotherapy. While aspects of the psychoanalytic theory are still found among some of today’s therapists who are trained from a psychodynamic perspective, Roger’s ideas about client-centered therapy have been especially influential in shaping how many clinicians operate. Furthermore, both behaviorism and the cognitive revolution have shaped clinical practice in the forms of behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Issues related to the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and problematic patterns of behavior will be discussed in detail in later chapters of this textbook.

By far, this is the area of psychology that receives the most attention in popular media, and many people mistakenly assume that all psychology is clinical psychology.

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

Forensic psychology is a branch of psychology that deals questions of psychology as they arise in the context of the justice system. For example, forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists) will assess a person’s competency to stand trial, assess the state of mind of a defendant, act as consultants on child custody cases, consult on sentencing and treatment recommendations, and advise on issues such as eyewitness testimony and children’s testimony (American Board of Forensic Psychology, 2014). In these capacities, they will typically act as expert witnesses, called by either side in a court case to provide their research- or experience-based opinions. As expert witnesses, forensic psychologists must have a good understanding of the law and provide information in the context of the legal system rather than just within the realm of psychology. Forensic psychologists are also used in the jury selection process and witness preparation. They may also be involved in providing psychological treatment within the criminal justice system. Criminal profilers are a relatively small proportion of psychologists that act as consultants to law enforcement.

Psychology is a diverse discipline that is made up of several major subdivisions with unique perspectives. Biological psychology involves the study of the biological bases of behavior. Sensation and perception refer to the area of psychology that is focused on how information from our sensory modalities is received, and how this information is transformed into our perceptual experiences of the world around us. Cognitive psychology is concerned with the relationship that exists between thought and behavior, and developmental psychologists study the physical and cognitive changes that occur throughout one’s lifespan. Personality psychology focuses on individuals’ unique patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. Industrial and organizational psychology, health psychology, sport and exercise psychology, forensic psychology, and clinical psychology are all considered applied areas of psychology. Industrial and organizational psychologists apply psychological concepts to I-O settings. Health psychologists look for ways to help people live healthier lives, and clinical psychology involves the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic behavioral patterns. Sport and exercise psychologists study the interactions between thoughts, emotions, and physical performance in sports, exercise, and other activities. Forensic psychologists carry out activities related to psychology in association with the justice system.

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