What is Psychology ?

Suffix “-Logy” means “science”. So psychology is the study of Psyche of human being.

But what does "study of Psyche" mean?

Long time back, some people would have noticed that there was a consistent pattern, in the way humans and animals behave, in certain set of conditions. They would have experimented by formulating “what if?” scenarios:  “How a person would react if so & so was done to him? … Or kept in such & such condition?”

Perhaps those observations had lead to the development of this science.

Next obvious step would have been the study of influence of others, on the  behavior of an individual. This would have led to the study of relations. All sort of relations: Husband – wife, Teacher–student, mother-child, family members, relationship among friends  and many more.

And then some industrialist would have funded the academia to study the trouble making trade Unions. Or may be someone got intrigued by a successful sports team. And in this way perhaps, Teams, their behaviors and how individual behave in a team, would have become subject of study.

Then there were organizations, social groups, communes etc. Some people would have started studying them.Their behavior, the behavior of the people working in them and so on and so forth.

But so far, all this study was limited to define the How part only, to a larger extent. “How an entity will behave in a set of situation?” But it was not able to shed  much light on “Why”. Why we behave the way we do?

And then came, Mr. Sigmund Freud.

He suggested that … We behave in a certain manner. And those behaviors are designed so that we can unconsciously be able to avoid certain unpleasant truths about ourselves (our fears, phobias etc).

By analyzing our thought process, we can find out those truths … those influencing factors. And perhaps then we can manage to avoid being controlled by them.

And in this way Psycho-analysis also got added to the science of Psychology.

Now we have answers to “How’s” as well as of “Why’s”.

“Psychology seek to explain the thinking, emotion and behavior of individuals, couples, families and other social groups.”

“Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes, emotion, personality, behavior, and relationships.”