Psychology

As far back as Aristotle, philosophers and thinkers were questioning the workings of the human mind. The word "psychology" was coined in 1590 by a German scholastic philosopher interested in the religious aspects of the human mind. And in 1672, De Anima Brutorum, by Thomas Willis, discussed psychology as a medical discipline. But it was not until 1879 that a psychologist, the German Wilhelm Wundt, first hung out his shingle.

Wundt started a psychology laboratory at the University of Germany in Leipzig, publishing Principles of Psychology eleven years later, a book that laid the foundations of psychology. Researchers from all over the world started working with this new science, notably Ivan Pavlov, famous for his studies of classical and operant conditioning. But Sigmund Freud began the lucrative and sometimes helpful practice of psychoanalysis.

Freud was interested in resolving mental distress and alleviating psychopathology. Though he is often discounted today as a sex-obsessed and flawed scientist, his clinical work in psychology and his mainstream work both shaped psychology as we know it today.

Freud's intuitive methods gave way to behaviourism in the 20th century, in which the possibilities of conditioning humans through many different means (including advertising) was examined and often implemented. It became clearer over the years that bahaviourism, once touted by B.F. Skinner and other researchers as the sum total explanation of human behavior, was deeply flawed. It did not explain, for instance, the development by humans of creative language, or for that matter art and creativity.

Meanwhile, medical treatments for the human mind were developing as well. As science and scientific methods advanced, it became more and more clear that if one could fix the chemistry of the brain, one could better repair the mind. But with the complexity and delicacy of the nervous system, it's difficult to find just the right fix for it. And with more work being done on genetics and how proteins are formed in the nervous system, it is also growing clearer that adding chemicals to the brain can sometimes just make an already-broken function worse in the long run.

The human mind can be studied in relation to:

• Its physiology and biology: neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience (this is the branch that uses a lot of MRI brain scanning to detect areas of activity)
• The nature of thought: cognitive psychology, perception, cognitivism
• The development of the human mind throughout life: developmental and educational psychology
• Human social behavior and interaction: social psychology, community psychology, personality psychology, social cognition

Health psychology is a different take on psychology. Instead of studying the human psyche clinically, health psychology looks at the way healthy eating, a positive (or negative) doctor-patient relationship, knowledge of health information, and beliefs about illness affect a patient's recovery.

All these fields are interested in the recovery of the individual's body or mind, through analysis, medication, or diet and exercise. In many cases, these interventions work. In others, they don't. Some patients simply don't have the funds to pay for psychological intervention. Others have disorders that psychology does not yet understand well.

And still others are left unsatisfied by psychology. By focusing on itself as a science, psychology may have done itself a disservice: it has largely ignored the spiritual aspect of the human mind. Faith is treated as a biological peculiarity, and people who have overcome every obstacle to achieve greatness are totally unexplainable.

Psychology is not the answer to everything. For the person who seeks to make himself or herself whole, there are many other options.