Understanding Psychology for Medicine and Nursing

Insights and Applications

Mohamed Ahmed Abd El-Hay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000754414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The book presents a comprehensive updated approach to current psychological knowledge to facilitate a rapid review of the major subjects in psychology in medicine and to stimulate further detailed study.

The book is divided into five Parts. Part One provides an elaborate background of the various sub-disciplines of psychology, the various theories and schools of thoughts encompassing them. Part Two discusses the links between the physical and psychological state of being human. Part Three elucidates the basic psychological processes that shape human cognizance. Part Four talks about the different factors which influence the human psyche. Part Five discusses the various aspects of clinical psychology and their implications for the physical well-being of people.

Understanding Psychology for Medicine and Nursing distinguishes itself in providing a concise, clear understanding of most of the basic topics of psychology that are essential to all students of general psychology, but particularly to medical and nursing students, and to postgraduate trainees in psychiatry.

PART ONE

Psychology

Science and Application

CHAPTER 1—Introduction

CHAPTER 2—Major Areas of Applied Psychology

CHAPTER 3—Research in Psychology

CHAPTER 4—Major Schools of Psychology

I Structuralism

II Functionalism

III Evolutionary Psychology

IV Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theories

V The Behavioral School

VI The Cognitive School

VII The Biological School

VIII Social-Cultural Psychology

IX The Gestalt School

X The Humanistic School

one

Introduction

Learning Goals

■ This chapter is intended to provide the reader with common definitions of psychology, and give a brief history of its birth as a science, and the scope of current psychology.

Introduction

Psychology is a popular major for students, an important perspective in clinical practice, a popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday life. During its relatively short history as a separate field of study, definitions of psychology have changed frequently, this change echoed the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical views regarding the nature of human beings and the most appropriate methods for investigating them. Generally speaking, psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. The word “psychology” comes from the Greek words “psyche,” meaning mind, soul, or spirit, and “logos,” meaning knowledge or study. Literally speaking, psychology is the study of the mind. According to the British Psychological Society, psychology is the scientific study of people, the mind, and behavior. The focus of psychology is the human being, who is a complex subject. Psychologists study human issues that begin before birth and continue until death. A human being is at once a biological organism, a social organism, and an organism with a mind.

While contemporary psychology reflects a discipline with rich and varied history, the origins of psychology differ significantly from current conceptions of the field. By understanding the history of psychology, one can gain a better understanding of how topics in psychology were studied and what we have learned thus far.

The History of Psychology

More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates and his followers, Plato and Aristotle, wrote about topics such as pleasure, pain, knowledge, motivation, and rationality. They theorized about whether human traits are innate or the product of experience, a topic which continues to be a subject of debate in current psychology. They also considered the origins of mental illness, with both Socrates and Plato focusing on psychological forces as the root of such illnesses. Many of Aristotle’s ideas remained influential until the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century (Kheriaty, 2007). However, philosophers could advance the understanding of human behavior only to a certain point. Their methods were limited to intuition, observation, and logic.

PHOTO 1.1. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato.

Psychology as a separate field of study grew out of several other disciplines, both scientific (specifically physiology) and non-scientific (specifically philosophy). Prior to the 1870s, psychologists had trained mainly as physiologists, doctors, philosophers, or some combination of these, there were no laboratories devoted specifically to psychological research.

The emergence of psychology as a science was not clear until the French philosopher, René Descartes (1596–1650) proposed a doctrine called “interactive dualism”: the idea that mind and body were separate entities that interact to form sensations, emotions, and other conscious experiences. This concept had a great impact on the development of both psychology as a science and science in general.

Dualism allowed scientists to treat matter as inert and completely distinct from human beings, which meant that the world could be described objectively, without reference to the human observer. Descartes viewed the material world as comprised of objects which are assembled like a huge machine and operated by mechanical laws. He extended this view to living organisms, including, eventually, humans. Because the mind (unlike the physical world) is non-material, Descartes believed that it can be investigated only through introspection (observing one’s own thoughts and feelings). Objectivity became the ideal of science, and was extended to the study of human behavior and social institutions in the mid-1800s by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who called it “positivism,” which suggests that our way of thinking is divided into three major phases: theological, metaphysical, and the third is scientific, or rather, to be more precise, “positivist” (Comte, 1903).

PHOTO 1.2. René Descartes.

The emergence of psychology as a distinct scientific discipline is generally dated to 1879, when the German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. During the mid-1800s, Wundt used scientific research methods to investigate reaction times. His book, Principles of Physiological Psychology, published in 1874, outlined many of the major connections between the science of physiology and the study of human thought and behavior. Wundt defined psychology as the study of human consciousness and emphasized the use of experimental methods to study and measure consciousness. Wundt advanced the technique of introspection as the “scientific” tool that would enable researchers to reveal the structure of the mind. While Wundt’s influence declined in the years to come, his early work in psychology helped set the stage for future experimental methods, and his impact on psychology is unquestionable.

By the early twentieth century, the validity and usefulness of introspection were seriously being questioned, particularly by John B. Watson, an American psychologist. Watson believed that the results of introspection could never be proved or disproved; introspection is subjective, and only the individual can observe his or her own mental processes. Ivan Pavlov’s work on the conditioned reflex (induced under rigid laboratory controls, and therefore empirically observable and quantifiable) had given birth to an academic psychology in the United States led by John Watson which came to be called “the science of behavior.” Watson believed that only behavior is measurable and observable by more than one person. He proposed that psychologists should confine themselves to studying behavior. Watson’s behaviorism largely replaced structuralism, advocating that people should be regarded as complex animals and studied using the same scientific methods as those used in chemistry and physics. Behaviorism totally rejected Freudian notions about unconscious influences. For Watson, psychology should match the natural sciences and adopt its own objective methods to be a scientific discipline. Watson (1919) defined psychology as the division of natural science which deals with human behavior “both learned and unlearned doings and sayings” as its subject matter.

PHOTO 1.3. Wilhelm Wundt.

PHOTO 1.4. John B. Watson.

Perhaps the school of psychology that is most familiar to the general public is the psychodynamic approach to understanding behavior, which was championed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his followers.

Psychodynamic psychology focused on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. Freud developed his theories about behavior through extensive analysis of the patients whom he treated in his private clinical practice. Freud believed that many of the problems that his patients experienced, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects of painful childhood experiences that the person could no longer remember. So, while the behaviorists ignored the unconscious because they felt that its essential privacy and subjectivity rendered it inaccessible to scientific study, psychodynamic psychologists tended to regard behavior as a relatively superficial expression of unconscious drives.

In the late 1950s, many British and American psychologists were heavily influenced by computer science, in an attempt to understand more complex behaviors which they felt had either been neglected altogether or greatly oversimplified by learning theory (conditioning). These complex behaviors were what Wundt, Watson, and other early scientific psychologists had called “mind or mental processes.” Instead, cognitive psychologists used the term “cognition or cognitive processes” to refer to the ways in which people come to know the world around them, how they attain, retain, and regain information, through the processes of perception, attention, memory, problem-solving, decision-making, language, and thinking in general. Cognitive psychologists see people as information processors, and human cognitive processes as similar to the operation of computer programs.

Contemporary psychology is interested in an enormous range of topics that look into human behavior and mental processes from the neural level to the cultural level. Contemporary psychology explores concepts such as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, resilience, the unconscious mind, and interpersonal relationships. The resulting knowledge is then applied to various spheres of human activity, including the problems of individuals’ daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. The multiple perspectives in modern psychology provide researchers and students a variety of ways to approach problems and to understand, explain, predict, and resolve human thought and behavior. Perhaps the field of psychology struggles to find a unifying paradigm because human beings are multifaceted and human experiences are so diverse and complex.

PHOTO 1.5. Sigmund Freud.

However, despite the dramatic growth and change that psychology displayed across its history, the story certainly does not end here. Psychology has continued to evolve and new ideas and perspectives are still being introduced. 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. Studying psychology will reveal that there are many different ways to think about and deal with human experience, thought, and behavior.

Despite the differences in their interests, areas of study, and approaches, all psychologists have one th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• PART ONE: PSYCHOLOGY: SCIENCE AND APPLICATION
• PART TWO: BIOLOGY, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND GENDER
• PART THREE: BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES
• PART FOUR: DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL FACTORS, PERSONALITY, AND INTELLIGENCE
• PART FIVE: CLINICAL AND HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
• References
• Index