Diversity of Psychology the Diverse

Diversity of Psychology

The Diverse Nature of Psychology

"Psychology is not about "getting rid" of symptoms. Unlike politics, and even unlike medicine, psychology is not about waging war or getting control of anything. Instead, it's about making peace with -- by listening to and understanding -- your symptoms. And, curiously enough, once you listen to, rather than fear, your symptoms you might be enlightened by a profound wisdom that will become a great blessing to your life."

(Guide to Psychology)

Psychology is the use of scientific methods to understand, explain, and predict human behavior (Cherry 2010). Within this broad definition, Psychologists adopt very different approaches to their task. Three of the most popular sub-disciplines are: psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy, and behavioral therapy.

Psychoanalysis first became popular in the early 1900s, following Freud's approach to understanding the mind and human behavior. Practitioners of psychoanalysis today may still hold to some of the early precepts associated with it, including a set of very specific pieces to the format of treatment sessions. These sessions must occur daily, and in a traditional format, with the client lying flat on a couch while the therapist sits behind the couch, out of sight. During these interactions, the therapist says very little, encouraging the client to "free associate"; from these narratives, the therapist can construct an interpretation and analysis of the client's unconscious mind. Often, sessions revolve around childhood experiences and relationships with family. Psychoanalysts believe that these primary relationships can tell them a lot about how the person currently functions in the world.

Cognitive approaches to therapy ask clients to more actively choose and make decisions in their lives. The focus is therefore much less on the unconscious, as in psychoanalysis, and more on the ability of people to make conscious changes in their lives by focusing on motivation, problem solving, and attention patterns (Cherry 2010). For example, some therapists who adopt this approach may work on helping troubled clients learn to control their own thought patterns. These changes may be taught through conditioning exercises or learned through reinforcement. What matters the most to therapists who follow this approach is that the behavior is effectively changed; how that change comes to pass is a question of strategy. Examples of cognitive techniques include the use of hypnosis and relaxation techniques. In both of these examples, clients are essentially re-programmed to stop behaviors that are counter-productive and instead adopt healthier modes of response.

Behavioral therapy has a lot in common with cognitive therapy, and indeed some practitioners label their approach "cognitive-behavioral." It is worth separating the two here, as the differences between the two highlight the diversity of the discipline. Behavioral learning is defined as "a change in behavior brought on by experience." (Psychological Approaches to Learning). Made famous through the Pavlov experiment, where dogs were shown to salivate at the sound of a bell once they had learned that food followed the noise, behavioral therapists seek to "re-condition" their clients. Thus, like their cognitive colleagues, behavioral therapists work with their clients to bring about conscious changes in their lives. Repeated practice with different responses to troubling stimuli may allow a patient to adjust his/her behavior to be more productive.