This assignment will cover what psychology is and where it originated from. It will also include some of the main individuals that helped put psychology on the map of scientific research, uncovering the tactics that were used to develop, which is now one of the most studied subjects within the United Kingdom, psychology.
Psychology is the scientific study of mental and behavioural processes in humans and animals. A Psychologist will observe and document how humans and animals interact with one another and their environment. Thus giving answers to important questions which are asked as to why humans and animals are as they are and how they become what they become. It enables Psychologists’ to predict and give insight regarding someone’s behavioural pattern.
The word Psychology originates from Greece, psyche meaning soul or mind and logos meaning word or study. It was famous Greek philosophers, as early as 322 BC, Plato and Aristotle that studied and opened up people’s interest of what it means to be human. How that was done was from self-analysis. Philosophers spent most of their time ‘looking within’ or what is called introspection, analysing their own feelings and mental experiences and as a result were able to develop awareness of what it is to be human. Aristotle theorised about all aspects of the brain, learning, motivation and personality, to name only a few, but it was not until Rene Descartes born 1596 that considered that mind and body, as separate identities, influenced each other. The idea of Dualism was born. Descartes believed that humans could be viewed like a machine. For humans to be understood the mind contained the consciousness, free will, knowledge and awareness and the body contained the physiology, meaning nature, origin and scientific study of function in living systems(Wikipedia), of a being. Descartes, as a philosopher, tried to use this theory in answering what