Specialist areas of psychology Clinical Psychology -This involves helping people who have mental health concerns or problems.

The aim is to help people cope more successfully with their lives. Occupational Psychology - This involves improving peoples performance in the work place, by reducing stress factors, for example, or by making sure that the best candidate is chosen for a specific job. Forensic Psychology -This involves working with criminals in an effort to understand and/or change their behaviour. It usually involves working closely with the police and prison staff. It can cover the rehabilitation of criminals as well as finding the perpetrators of an individual crime Research Psychology - This involves undertaking research both academically and in other areas such as in industry, for example. Educational Psychology -This involves working with school aged children and young adults. Educational support is offered to pupils, parents and teachers. Health Psychology -This involves improving mental health, particularly when people are adjusting to or recovering from physical illness that has drastically changed their lifestyle. Counseling Psychology -This involves dealing with people who have personal problems or problems in relationships. The aim is to help people deal with the stresses of their everyday life. Sports Psychology -This involves enhancing and improving personal sports performance. The psychologist works with sportsmen and women,

teams, coaches and sports clubs. He /she devises better training programmes to improve competitive performance. Consumer Psychology -This involves working with businesses and within industry to promote an understanding of how and why consumers behave and choose products. Marketing and advertising are areas that use this type of psychology. Psychology has five different approaches. SCHOOL OF THOUGHT Cognitive psychology deals with gathering and using information. We perceive things, take in information and process it. We then remember, recognize, think and reason. These mental processes are called cognition and help us to understand why someone is acting in a particular way. Developmental psychology looks at how we change as we grow and age and how this affects us. Physiological psychology looks at how our psychological state influences us. A physiological psychologist might consider how we are affected by drugs or stress, for example. Or how sleep patterns affect us. Individual psychology looks at how we are different from each other. It considers abnormalities It also concerns the different motivation that different people have. Social psychology looks at how we act when we are with other people. Our body language when we are with others falls into this category. It looks at areas like why we obey people in authority, for example or why we conform.

So what exactly is psychology and how did it start? The study of the mind, which is what psychology is, has a long history. We can track writers back two thousand years, such as the great Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who were philosophers but spent much of their time trying to analyze feelings and experiences in an effort to understand what it meant to be a human being. Philosophy existed for literally ages. It involved the process of introspection, which means looking within yourself. Psychology is a relatively new subject in historical terms It has only been considered a formal scientific subject since the nineteenth century. 1879 is often said to be the start of psychology as we now know it. Since early times, writers had considered behaviour and particularly abnormal behaviour and tried to offer explanations. Due to the lack of medical knowledge that we have today, their theories were simplistic. However, the idea that an imbalance of bodily fluids in the body could bring about abnormal behaviour or disease was held for some time. The other subject that was influential to the basis of psychology was physics. Psychologists use many methods and principles that physicists use in their scientific work. Physicists began to apply their scientific principles to human behaviour.

So, you can see that there is not one simple answer to the question where did psychology start? Lets look at this in more depth. The French philosopher and mathematician Descartes (1596-1650) developed the idea of ex machina - that humans can be understood and explained just as if they were a machine.

He put forward the notion that human beings were made up of two parts. Our mind : knowledge, awareness, free will and consciousness And our body: our physiology i.e. the parts that make up our physical body, our arms, legs etc.

This is a theory of dualism where he believed that body and mind interacted within the brain.

There were many debates about whether our abilities were present at birth, in other words they were innate abilities. This was Decartes idea and it is known as a nativist idea. Locke and Hobbes held the opinion that we become what we are because of our environment. The debate continued and still continues to rage about how much do we inherit and how much does our environment influence us. This is known as the nativist-empiricist debate.

In the early nineteenth century German physiologists Weber, Helmholtz and Fechner contributed to the beginnings of the subject. Weber looked in detail at our ability to touch. The fact that we could identify differences in weight by holding objects. Helmholtz worked on theories about nerves and their impulses, colour vision and hearing. Fechner looked at our senses and perception and put forward ideas about using experimental methods to make conclusions. 1879 is said to be the date that psychology emerged as a separate science to consider behaviour and mental processes, rather than as previously when it had been a mixture of physics, medicine, biology and other forms of science. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), a German professor, founded the first laboratory for the scientific study of psychology at the University of Leipzig. Wundts technique was to measure and record data about peoples actions and reactions. This is known as introspection. Introspection involves you considering your actions and reactions. Wundt was observing, controlling, and measuring experiences when people were exposed to a stimulus. Wundts school of thought was known as Structuralism.

Structuralists did, however, have some difficulties with this approach since the results that were recorded were not based on scientific methods but on introspection which meant, of course, that the results could be subjective. and personal Structuralism declined because of its inability to offer scientific confirmation of its findings in its use of introspection. Psychology today relies on scientific evidence. Functionalism, another early school of psychology, was prevalent in the late nineteenth century. William James (1842-1910), an American, wrote Principles of Psychology. He had been influenced by Charles Darwins book On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection. James agreed with Darwin that we must have evolved with characteristics that served a purpose. So types of behaviour, emotions and thoughts must have a particular function or they would not have been retained by the species. Functionalists looked at different aspects of our behaviour and tried to analyse the function of behaviour that occurs in all human beings, regardless of their culture, e.g. we smile if we are happy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud in Austria developed psychoanalysis, which was a means of therapy. Feud offered a theory of the human mind and behaviour which was controversial at the time. Freud believed that the unconscious mind should be the object of investigation. He

Wilhelm Wundt wanted people that he studied to analyse their feelings and the sensations or images that accompanied experiences

believed that we are often controlled by processes that we just do not realise are acting on us. Another approach to psychology that was critical of all except approaches which investigated behaviour that could be observed was the school of behaviourism. John Watson, (1878-1958) introduced psychology as the study of behaviour. His aim was to describe, predict, understand and to control behaviour. For behaviourists the mind and consciousness were difficult to observe and therefore did not assist in a scientific approach to psychology. This approach dominated experimental psychology until about the 1950s. Gestalt psychology also featured at the same time This developed in Germany and focused around the brains ability to structure and organise what was being perceived.

Machines were led to make models of how the brain might work and then to adapt them using scientific methods. Due to the fact that computers have many human-like processes such as remembering and problem solving, it was felt that they could offer models of how people function. There are two other approaches of psychology, the humanistic approach and the biological approach. The humanistic approach offers the view that we are essentially productive and healthy people. The approach argues that people only need guidance to come to this state if things have gone wrong in their lives. This approach has not had such an impact on modern psychology as, for example, behaviourism. The biological approach offers the theory that evolution, physiology and genetics are the reasons for our behaviour. these are all a variety of approaches to psychology that have emerged since its birth. All have influenced the makings of what it is today: the study of behaviour and mental processes.

The various approaches to psychology added a wealth of interest to the subject in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All of the approaches have made psychology what it is today.

Other approaches include cognitive psychology which developed to investigate the mind using artificial intelligence, such as computers.

Democritus (c. 460 370 BC) believed that the human mind is composed of atoms which could circulate freely and which enabled it to penetrate the whole body According to him, atoms from our environment enter through our sense organs enabling us to perceive the world around us. According to Plato (c 427 347BC) the mind or soul is distinct in its own right and is God given. It enters the body with its reflected perfectio of God and rules the body which inhibits as knower, thinker and determiner of action. The soul is composed of three parts That which exerts reason (in the head); that which is responsible for our noble impulses (in the heart); and the basest part: the seat of our passions (in the diaphragm) Aristotle (c 384 322 BC), a student of Plato, distinguished three function of the soul the vegetative, concerned with basic maintenance of life: the appetitive, concerned with motives and desires: and the rational, the governing function located in the heart. The brain merely performs minor mechanical process as a gland. Galen (AD c 130 - 200) contributed his theory of the dependence of human temperamentthe combination of mental, physical, a nd emotional traits of aperson; natural predisposition. On physiological factors. Differences in the behavior is attributable to the humors or vital juices of the body: blood,phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Hence, he correspondingly named the temparaments sanguine (cheerful) -full of cheer ; in good spirits , phlegmatic (sluggish) Lacking alertness, vigor, or energy, melancholic (sad), and choleric (irascible)- marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger