PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist, and can be classified as a social scientist, behavioral scientist, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain functions and behaviors. Psychologists explore such concepts as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, someespecially clinical and counseling psychologistsat times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology incorporates research from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, such as philosophy. While psychological knowledge is often applied to the assessment and treatment of mental health problems, it is also applied to understanding and solving problems in many different spheres of human activity. Although the majority of psychologists are involved in some kind of therapeutic role (clinical, counseling, and school positions), many do scientific research on a wide range of topics related to mental processes and behavior (typically in university psychology departments) or teach such knowledge in academic settings; and some are employed in industrial and organizational settings, and in other areas such as human development and aging, sports, health, the media, law, and forensics.

PSYCHO ANALYSIS
From the 1890s until his death in 1939, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks; a systematized set of theories about human behavior; and a form of psychotherapy to treat psychological or emotional distress, especially unconscious conflict. Freud's psychoanalytic theory was largely based on interpretive methods, introspection and clinical observations. It became very well known, largely because it tackled subjects such as sexuality, repression, and the unconscious mind as general aspects of psychological development. These were largely considered taboo subjects at the time, and Freud provided a catalyst for them to be openly discussed in polite society. Clinically, Freud helped to pioneer the method of free association and a therapeutic interest in dream interpretation. Freud had a significant influence on Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose analytical psychology became an alternative form of depth psychology. Other well-known psychoanalytic scholars of the mid-20th century included psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers. Among these thinkers were Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, John Bowlby, and Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna Freud. Throughout the 20th century, psychoanalysis evolved into diverse schools of thought, most of which may be classed as Neo-Freudian. Psychoanalytic theory and therapy were criticized by psychologists such as Hans Eysenck, and by philosophers including Karl Popper. Popper, a philosopher of science, argued that psychoanalysis had been misrepresented as a scientific discipline, whereas Eysenck said that psychoanalytic tenets had been contradicted by experimental data. By the 20th century, psychology departments in American universities had become scientifically oriented, marginalizing Freudian theory and dismissing it as a "desiccated and dead" historical artifact. Meanwhile, however, researchers in the emerging field of neuro-psychoanalysis defended some of Freud's ideas on scientific grounds, while scholars of the humanities maintained that Freud was not a "scientist at all, but ... an interpreter."

PERSPECTIVE
There are various different approaches in contemporary psychology. An approach is a perspective (i.e. view) that involves certain assumptions (i.e. beliefs) about human behavior: the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking this study. There may be several different theories within an approach, but they all share these common assumptions.You may wonder why there are so many different psychology perspectives and whether one approach is correct and others wrong. Most psychologists would agree that no one perspective is correct, although in the past, in the early days of psychology, the behaviorist would have said their perspective was the only truly scientific one. Each perspective has its strengths and weaknesses, and brings something different to our understanding of human behavior. For this reasons, it is important that psychology does have different perspectives to the understanding and study of human and animal behavior.

Five main psychological approaches [sometimes called perspectives] Behaviorist Psycho Dynamic Humanism Cognitive Biological

BEHAVIORISM
If your layperson's idea of psychology has always been of people in laboratories wearing white coats and watching hapless rats try to negotiate mazes in order to get to their dinner, then you are probably thinking of behavioral psychology. Behaviorism is different from most other approaches because they view people (and animals) as controlled by their environment and specifically that we are the result of what we have learned from our environment. Behaviorism is concerned with how environmental factors (called stimuli) affect observable behavior (called the response). The behaviorist approach proposes two main processes whereby people learn from their environment: namely classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves learning by association, and operant conditioning involves learning from the consequences of behavior. Behaviorism also believes in scientific methodology (e.g. controlled experiments), and that only observable behavior should be studies because this can be objectively measured. Behaviorism rejects the idea that people have free will, and believes that the environment determines all behavior. Behaviorism is the scientific study of observable behavior working on the basis that behavior can be reduced to learn S-R (Stimulus-Response) units. Classical Conditioning (CC) was studied by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. Though looking into natural reflexes and neutral stimuli he managed to condition dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through repeated associated of the sound of the bell and food. The principles of CC have been applied in many therapies. These include systematic desensitization for phobias (step-by-step exposed to feared stimulus at once) and aversion therapy. B.F. Skinner investigated Operant Conditioning of voluntary and involuntary behavior. Skinner felt that some behavior could be explained by the person's motive. Therefore behavior occurs for a reason, and the three main behavior shaping techniques are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Behaviorism has been criticized in the way it under-estimates the complexity of human behavior. Many studies used animals which are hard to generalize to humans and it cannot explain for example the speed in which we pick up language. There must be biological factors involved.

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology was institutionalized as a science in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt who found the first psychological laboratory. His initiative was soon followed by other European and American Universities. These early laboratories, through experiments, explored areas such as memory and sensory perception, both of which Wundt believed to be closely related to physiological processes in the brain. The whole movement had evolved from the early philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato. Today this approach is known as Cognitive Psychology. Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know what makes people tick then the way to do it is to figure out what processes are actually going on in their minds. In other words, psychologists from this perspective study cognition which is the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired. The cognitive perspective is concerned with mental functions such as memory, perception, attention etc. It views people as being similar to computers in the way we process information (e.g. input-process-output). For example, both human brains and computers process information, store data and have input and output procedures. This had led cognitive psychologists to explain that memory comprises of three stages: encoding (where information is received and attended to), storage (where the information is retained) and retrieval (where the information is recalled). It is an extremely scientific approach and typically uses lab experiments to study human behavior. The cognitive approach has many applications including cognitive therapy and eyewitness testimony.

Pre-Freudian history of the "unconscious" notion

The idea originated in antiquity. Certain philosophers preceding the medical scientist Sigmund Freud (such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche), developed ideas foreshadowing the modern idea of the unconscious. The new therapeutic intervention and its associated rationale, known as psychoanalysis, that was established by Freud and his followers popularized this.

Freud proposed the theoretical position that there were layers to human consciousness: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. He claimed that certain psychic events take place "below the surface", in the unconscious mind.

The psychoanalytic unconscious

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious refers to that part of mental functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware. The psychoanalytic unconscious is similar to but not precisely the same as the popular notion of the subconscious. However, in the modern field of personal development the terms 'unconscious mind' and 'subconscious mind' are often interchangeable. For psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not include all of what is simply not conscious it does not include e.g. motor skills but rather, only what is actively repressed from conscious thought. Because 'processes of thinking' explicitly are processed by conscious ways, thoughts are locking themselves up. Intuition does not arrive anymore from subconscious, and so doesnt understandings, which normally interfere within thoughts, to develop progress. As defined by Sigmund Freud, the psyche is composed of different levels of consciousness, often defined in three parts as the preconscious the waking consciousness and beneath both of these, the unconscious. For Freud, the unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects it expresses itself in the symptom. Today, there are still fundamental disagreements within psychology about the nature of the unconscious mind if indeed it can be considered to exist at all; i.e., rather than it simply being a metaphor that ought not to be reified whereas, outside formal psychology, a whole world of pop-psychological speculation has grown up in which the unconscious mind is held to have any number of properties and abilities, from animalistic and innocent, child-like aspects to savant-like, all-perceiving, mystical and occultist properties. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis.

Freud's definition
Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of 'unconscious mind' and the one which most people will immediately think of upon hearing the term is that developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers, and which lies at the heart of psychoanalysis. It should be stressed, incidentally, that the popular term 'subconscious' is not a Freudian coinage and is never used in serious psychoanalytic writings. Freud's concept was a more subtle and complex psychological theory than many. Consciousness, in Freud's topographical view (which was his first of several psychological models of the mind) was a relatively thin perceptual aspect of the mind, whereas the subconscious (frequently misused and confused with the unconscious) was that merely autonomic function of the brain. The unconscious was indeed considered by Freud throughout the evolution of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious. In another of Freud's systematizations, the mind is divided into the conscious mind or Ego and two parts of the Unconscious: the Id or instincts and the Superego. Freud used the idea of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior. (See psychoanalysis.) Freud's theory of the unconscious was substantially transformed by some of his followers, among them Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.

CONTROVERSY
There is a great controversy over the concept of an unconscious in regard to its scientific or rational validity and whether the unconscious mind exists at all. Among philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents. Popper argued that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific. Popper objected not so much to the idea that things happened in our minds that we are unconscious of; he objected to investigations of mind that were not falsifiable: if one could connect every imaginable

experimental outcome with Freud's theory of the unconscious mind, then no experiment could refute the theory. However, one could argue that the 'non-falsifiable' pseudo-problem demonstrates the inherent weakness in attempting to apply modern empirical science to the question of the existence of the unconscious. In the social sciences, John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviourist, criticizes the idea of an "unconscious mind," for similar line of reasoning, and instead focused on observable behaviors rather than on introspection. Unlike Popper, the epistemologist Adolf Grunbaum argues that psychoanalysis could be falsifiable, but its evidence has serious epistemological problems. David Holmes examined sixty years of research about the Freudian concept of repression, and concluded that there is no positive evidence for this concept. Given the lack of evidence of many Freudian hypotheses, some scientific researchers proposed the existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a cognitive unconscious (John Kihlstrom), an adaptive unconscious (Timothy Wilson), or a dumb unconscious (Loftus & Klinger), which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed. (Scientific research on unconscious processes). Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Bouveresse argued that Freudian thought exhibits a systemic confusion between reasons and causes: the method of interpretation can give reasons for new meanings, but are useless to find causal relations (which require experimental research). Wittgenstein gave the following example (in his Conversations with Rush Rhees): if we throw objects on a table, and we give free associations and interpretations about those objects, well find a meaning for each object and its place, but we wont find the causes. Other critics of Freudian unconscious were Hans Eysenck, Jacques Van Rillaer, Frank Cioffi, Marshal Edelson, Edward Erwin. It must be stressed, however, that these critics did not grasp the real importance of Freud conceptions, and rather tried to criticize Freud on the basis of other fields. The first who really grasped this was Bertrand Russell (see for example: "The impact of science in society, 1952). But in modern times, many other thinkers, as for example Althusser, and Bernard-Henri-Levy, managed to grasp the "falsification theory" from Popper, and the critics from Eysenck, as another expression of Master's discourse: the aspiration to a so-called scientific society leaded by evaluation. For this side of the controversy, cf the works of Jean Claude Milner in France. In modern cognitive psychology, many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as 'implicit' or 'automatic' have come into currency. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior. Active research traditions related to the unconscious include implicit memory[3] (see priming, implicit attitudes), and nonconscious acquisition of knowledge

UNCONSCIOUS MIND IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

While, historically, the psychoanalytic research tradition was the first to focus on the phenomenon on unconscious mental activity (and still the term "unconsciousness" or "the subconscious", for many, appears to be not only deeply rooted in, but almost synonymous with psychoanalytic tradition), there is an extensive body of conclusive research and knowledge in the contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to the mental activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness. Most of that (cognitive) research on unconscious processes has been done in the mainstream, academic tradition of the information processing paradigm. As opposed to the psychoanalytic tradition, driven by the - relatively speculative, in the sense of being hard to empirically verify - theoretical concepts such as Oedipus complex or Electra complex, the cognitive tradition of research on unconscious processes is based on relatively few theoretical assumption and is very empirically oriented (i.e., it is mostly data driven). That cognitive research has revealed that automatically, and clearly outside of conscious awareness, individuals register and acquire more information than what they can experience through their conscious thoughts.

Unconscious processing of information about frequency

For example, an extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks[4] has demonstrated that automatically (i.e., outside of conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources), individuals register information about the frequency of events. Moreover, that research demonstrates that perceivers do that unintentionally, truly "automatically," regardless of the instructions they receive, and regardless the information processing goals they have. Interestingly, their ability to unconsciously, and relatively accurately tally frequency of events appear to have little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality, thus it may

represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in general.

Artificial grammars
Another line of (non-psychoanalytic) early research on unconscious processes was initiated by Arthur Reber, using socalled "artificial grammar" methodology. That research revealed that individuals exposed to novel words created by complex set of artificial, synthetic "grammatical" rules (e.g., GKHAH, KHABT), quickly develop some sort of a "feel" for that grammar and subsequent working knowledge of that grammar, as demonstrated by their ability to differentiate between, new grammatically "correct" (i.e., consistent with the rules) and "incorrect" (inconsistent) words. Interestingly, that ability does not appear to be mediated, or even accompanied by the declarative knowledge of the rules (i.e., individuals' ability to articulate how they distinguish between the correct and incorrect words).

Unconscious acquisition of procedural knowledge

The gist of these early findings (from the seventies) has been significantly extended in the eighties and nineties by further research showing that outside of conscious awareness individuals not only acquire information about frequencies (i.e., "occurrences" of features or events) but also co-occurrences (i.e., correlations or, technically speaking, covariations) between features or events. Extensive research on nonconscious acquisition of information about covariations was conducted by Pawel Lewicki, followed by research of D. L. Schachter (who is known for introducing the concept of implicit memory, L. R. Squire, and others. In the learning phase of a typical study, participants were exposed to a stream of stimuli (trials or events, such as strings of letters, digits, pictures, or descriptions of stimulus persons) containing some consistent but non-salient (hidden) covariation between features or events. For example, every stimulus person presented as "fair" would also have a slightly elongated face. It turned out that even if the manipulated covariations were non-salient and inaccessible to subjects' conscious awareness, the perceivers would still acquire a nonconscious working knowledge about those covariations. For example, if in the testing phase of the study, participants were asked to make intuitive judgments about the personalities of new stimulus persons presented only as pictures (with no personality descriptions), and judge the "fairness" of the depicted individuals, they tend to follow the rules nonconsciously acquired in the learning phase and if the stimulus person had a slightly elongated face, they would report an intuitive feeling that this person was "fair." Nonconscious acquisition of information about covariations appears to be one of the fundamental and ubiquitous processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge (skills, experience) or even preferences or personality dispositions, including disorders or symptoms of disorders.

A note on terminology: "unconscious" vs. "nonconscious"

Unlike in the psychoanalytic research tradition that uses the terms "unconscious" or "subconscious," in the cognitive tradition, the processes that are not mediated by conscious awareness are sometimes referred to as "nonconscious." This term (rarely used in psychoanalysis) stresses the empirical and purely descriptive nature of that phenomenon (a qualification as simply "not being conscious") in the tradition of cognitive research. Specifically, the process is non-conscious when even highly motivated individuals fail to report it, and few theoretical assumptions are made about the process (unlike in psychoanalysis where, for example, it is postulated that some of these processes are being repressed in order to achieve certain goals.

DEFINITIONS:
Behavioral
This perspective looks how we learn from the consequences of our actions (i.e., if I study harder, I get better test score), at behaviors that are learned from watching others, and at behaviors that are learned unconsciously and automatically.

Cognitive
This perspective looks at how we think and reason, how we remember things, why we remember some things better than others, how we go about solving a math or a logic problem, why we are likely to pay attention to some things and not to others, and so on. For example, why can you remember some things that happened many years ago very clearly but you can't remember what you had for dinner just two months ago?

Social-Cultural
This perspective looks at how people in different cultures and social situations behave. Psychologists study how difference in cultural values and practices can lead to different ways of seeing the world and different ways of behaving. For example, if you show the same picture of a house on a hill to a Maori and to someone from Iowa, the Maori is more likely to be interested in the hillside, while the Iowan is more likely to be interested in the house.

Psychoanalytic
This perspective, initially developed by Sigmund Freud, is concerned with how our unconscious motives affect our behavior. Freud developed a comprehensive theory about why we do things without understanding our own motives. He also developed strategies to try to find out what is in the unconscious, such as dream interpretation.

Introduction to Learning Theory and Behavioral Psychology

Learning can be defined as the process leading to relatively permanent behavioral change or potential behavioral change. In other words, as we learn, we alter the way we perceive our environment, the way we interpret the incoming stimuli, and therefore the way we interact, or behave. John B. Watson (1878-1958) was the first to study how the process of learning affects our behavior, and he formed the school of thought known as Behaviorism. The central idea behind behaviorism is that only observable behaviors are worthy of research since other abstraction such as a persons mood or thoughts are too subjective. This belief was dominant in psychological research in the United Stated for a good 50 years. Perhaps the most well-known Behaviorist is B. F. Skinner (1904-1990). Skinner followed much of Watsons research and findings, but believed that internal states could influence behavior just as external stimuli. He is considered to be a Radical Behaviorist because of this belief, although nowadays it is believed that both internal and external stimuli influence our behavior. Behavioral Psychology is basically interested in how our behavior results from the stimuli both in the environment and within ourselves. They study, often in minute detail, the behaviors we exhibit while controlling for as many other variables as possible. Often a grueling process, but results have helped us learn a great deal about our behaviors, the effect our environment has on us, how we learn new behaviors, and what motivates us to change or remain the same.

Classical and Operant Conditioning

Classical Conditioning. One important type of learning, Classical Conditioning, was actually discovered
accidentally by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who discovered this phenomenon while doing research on digestion. His research was aimed at better understanding the digestive patterns in dogs. During his experiments, he would put meat powder in the mouths of dogs who had tubes inserted into various organs to measure bodily responses. What he discovered was that the dogs began to salivate before the meat powder was presented to them. Then, the dogs began to salivate as soon as the person feeding them would enter the room. He soon began to gain interest in this phenomenon and abandoned his digestion research in favor of his now famous Classical Conditioning study. Basically, the findings support the idea that we develop responses to certain stimuli that are not naturally occurring. When we touch a hot stove, our reflex pulls our hand back. It does this instinctually, no learning involved. It is merely a survival instinct. But why now do some people, after getting burned, pull their hands back even when the stove is not turned on? Pavlov discovered that we make associations which cause us to generalize our response to one stimuli onto a neutral stimuli it is paired with. In other words, hot burner = ouch, stove = burner, therefore, stove = ouch. Pavlov began pairing a bell sound with the meat powder and found that even when the meat powder was not presented, the dog would eventually begin to salivate after hearing the bell. Since the meat powder naturally results in salivation, these two variables are called the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the unconditioned response (UCR), respectively. The bell and salivation are not naturally occurring; the dog was conditioned to respond to the bell. Therefore, the bell is considered the conditioned stimulus (CS), and the salivation to the bell, the conditioned response (CR).

Many of our behaviors today are shaped by the pairing of stimuli. Have you ever noticed that certain stimuli, such as the smell of a cologne or perfume, a certain song, a specific day of the year, results in fairly intense emotions? It's not that the smell or the song are the cause of the emotion, but rather what that smell or song has been paired with...perhaps an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, the death of a loved one, or maybe the day you met you current husband or wife. We make these associations all the time and often dont realize the power that these connections or pairings have on us. But, in fact, we have been classically conditioned.

Operant Conditioning. Another type of learning, very similar to that discussed above, is called Operant
Conditioning. The term "Operant" refers to how an organism operates on the environment, and hence, operant conditioning comes from how we respond to what is presented to us in our environment. It can be thought of as learning due to the natural consequences of our actions. Let's explain that a little further. The classic study of Operant Conditioning involved a cat who was placed in a box with only one way out; a specific area of the box had to be pressed in order for the door to open. The cat initially tries to get out of the box because freedom is reinforcing. In its attempt to escape, the area of the box is triggered and the door opens. The cat is now free. Once placed in the box again, the cat will naturally try to remember what it did to escape the previous time and will once again find the area to press. The more the cat is placed back in the box, the quicker it will press that area for its freedom. It has learned, through natural consequences, how to gain the reinforcing freedom. We learn this way every day in our lives. Imagine the last time you made a mistake; you most likely remember that mistake and do things differently when the situation comes up again. In that sense, youve learned to act differently based on the natural consequences of your previous actions. The same holds true for positive actions. If something you did results in a positive outcome, you are likely to do that same activity again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/perspective.html http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Unconscious_mind http://allpsych.com/psychology101/conditioning.html http://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning.html