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What is Psychology
Psychology is the science of why people do what they do. While its roots can be traced to philosophical and religious texts that date back thousands of years, the formal, scientific study of psychology began 125 years ago. It is one of the broadest university disciplines, spanning subject matter in the humanities, the natural sciences, and other social sciences. In particular, psychologists study the intersection of two critical relationships: one between brain function and behaviour, and one between the environment and behaviour.

Psychologists use the scientific method to conduct both basic and applied research. They serve as consultants to communities and organizations; diagnose and treat people's mental states; assess intelligence and personality. They study how human beings relate to each other and also to machines, and they work to improve these relationships. With the increased globalization that is bringing people together, psychologists bring important knowledge and skills to understanding diverse cultures.

Psychologists traditionally study both normal and abnormal functioning, and they concentrate on behaviours that affect mental functioning and emotional health. For example, they work with business executives, actors, and athletes to reduce stress and improve performance. They advise police on the personality profiles of criminals and they collaborate with educators on school reform. Immediately following a calamity, such as a highway collapse or natural disaster, psychologists help victims and bystanders recover from the trauma of the event.

Most psychologists surveyed say they thoroughly enjoy their work. They cite the variety of daily tasks and the flexibility of their schedules. They are attracted by the exciting changes taking place in the field, from adapting technology to humans to working as part of primary health care teams.

While the study of psychology is ideal for students intending to work in this field, it is also excellent preparation for many other professions.

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Rudolph Goclenius (1547-1628), a German scholastic philosopher, is credited with inventing the term 'psychology' (1590). The root of the word psychology (psyche) means "soul" in Greek, and psychology was sometimes considered a study of the soul (in a religious sense of this term). Psychology as a medical discipline can be seen in Thomas Willis' reference to psychology (the "Doctrine of the Soul") in terms of brain function, as part of his 1672 anatomical treatise "De Anima Brutorum" ("Two Discourses on the Souls of Brutes").

Until about the end of the 19th century, psychology was regarded as a branch of philosophy. And also a cult in some cultures, they considered it an invasion of thought and a removal of inner uniqueness.[citation needed]

In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)(known as the father of Psychology) founded a laboratory at the Leipzig University in Germany specifically to focus on the study of psychology. William James later published his 1890 book, Principles of Psychology which laid many of the foundations for the sorts of questions that psychologists would focus on for years to come. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in studies on memory) and the Russian Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)(who discovered the learning process of classical conditioning).

Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud, who was trained as a neurologist and had no formal training in experimental psychology, had invented and applied a method of psychotherapy known as psychoanalysis. Freud's understanding of the mind was largely based on interpretive methods and introspection, but was particularly focused on resolving mental distress and psychopathology. Freud's theories became very well-known, probably because they tackled subjects such as sexuality and repression 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. Although Freud's theories are of virtually no interest today in psychology departments, his application of psychology to clinical work has been very influential.

Partly as a reaction to the subjective and introspective nature of psychology and its exclusive dependence upon the recollection of vague and faraway childhood experiences, behaviorism began to become popular as a guiding psychological theory. Championed by psychologists such as John B. Watson, Edward Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner, behaviorists argued that psychology should be a science of behavior, not the mind, they rejected the idea that internal mental states such as beliefs, desires, or goals, could be studied scientifically. In his paper "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" (1913), Watson argued that psychology "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science," "introspection forms no essential part of its methods" and "The behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute."

Behaviorism was the dominant model in psychology for much of the early 20th century, largely due to the creation and successful application (not least of which in advertising) of conditioning theories as scientific models of human behavior.

However, it became increasingly clear that although behaviorism had made some important discoveries, it was deficient as a guiding theory of human behavior. Noam Chomsky's review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (that aimed to explain language acquisition in a behaviorist framework) is considered one of the major factors in the ending of behaviorism's reign. Chomsky demonstrated that language could not purely be learned from conditioning, as people could produce sentences unique in structure and meaning that couldn't possibly be generated solely through experience of natural language, implying that there must be internal states of mind that behaviorism rejected as illusory. Similarly, work by Albert Bandura showed that children could learn by social observation, without any change in overt behavior, and so must be accounted for by internal representations.

Humanistic psychology emerged in the 1950s and has continued as a reaction to positivist and scientific approaches to the mind. It stresses a phenomenological view of human experience and seeks to understand human beings and their behavior by conducting qualitative research. The humanistic approach has its roots in existentialist and phenomenological philosophy and many humanist psychologists completely reject a scientific approach, arguing that trying to turn human experience into measurements strips it of all meaning and relevance to lived existence.

Some of the founding theorists behind this school of thought were Abraham Maslow who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, Carl Rogers who created and developed client-centred therapy, and Fritz Perls who helped create and develop Gestalt therapy.

The rise of computer technology also promoted the metaphor of mental function as information processing. This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitivism as the dominant model of the mind.

Links between brain and nervous system function were also becoming common, partly due to the experimental work of people like Charles Sherrington and Donald Hebb, and partly due to studies of people with brain injury (see cognitive neuropsychology). With the development of technologies for accurately measuring brain function, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience have become some of the most active areas in contemporary psychology.

With the increasing involvement of other disciplines (such as philosophy, computer science and neuroscience) in the quest to understand the mind, the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has been created as a means of focusing such efforts in a constructive way.

However, many psychologists have not been happy with what they perceive as 'mechanical' models of the mind and human nature. Coming full circle, Transpersonal psychology and the Analytical Psychology of Carl Jung seek to return psychology to its spiritual roots. Others, such as Serge Moscovici and Gerard Duveen, argue that behavior and thought are essentially social in nature and seek to embed psychology in a broader social scientific study that incorporates the social meaning of experience and behavior.

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Behaviorism
Behaviorism is the philosophical position that says that psychology, to be a science, must focus its attentions on what is observable -- the environment and behavior -- rather than what is only available to the individual -- perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings.... The latter are subjective and immune to measurement, and therefore can never lead to an objective science.
The first behaviorists were Russian. The very first was Ivan M. Sechenov (1829 to 1905). He was a physiologist who had studied at the University of Berlin with famous people like Müller, DuBois-Reymond, and Helmholtz. Devoted to a rigorous blend of associationism and materialism, he concluded that all behavior is caused by stimulation.
In 1863, he wrote Reflexes of the Brain. In this landmark book, he introduced the idea that there are not only excitatory processes in the central nervous system, but inhibitory ones as well.
Vladimir M. Bekhterev (1857 to 1927) is another early Russian behaviorist. He graduated in 1878 from the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, one year before Pavlov arrived there. He received his MD in 1881 at the tender age of 24, then went to study with the likes of DuBois-Reymond and Wundt in Berlin, and Charcot in France.
He established the first psychology lab in Russia at the university of Kazan in 1885, then returned to the Military Medical Academy in 1893. In 1904, he published a paper entitled "Objective Psychology," which he later expanded into three volumes.
He called his field reflexology, and defined it as the objective study of stimulus-response connections. Only the environment and behavior were to be discussed! And he discovered what he called the association reflex -- what Pavlov would call the conditioned reflex.

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What are the symptoms of a panic attack?

As described above, the symptoms of a panic attack appear suddenly, without any apparent cause. They may include:

* Racing or pounding heartbeat
* Chest pains
* Dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea
* Difficulty breathing
* Tingling or numbness in the hands
* Flushes or chills
* Dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions
* Terror - a sense that something unimaginably horrible is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it
* Fear of losing control and doing something embarrassing
* Fear of dying

A panic attack typically lasts for several minutes and is one of the most distressing conditions that a person can experience. Most who have one attack will have others. When someone has repeated attacks, or feels severe anxiety about having another attack, he or she is said to have panic disorder.
What are panic attacks?

Panic attacks are a panic disorder, which is a serious health problem in this country. At least 1.6 percent of adult Americans, or 3 million people, will have panic attacks at some time in their lives. The disorder is strikingly different from other types of anxiety in that panic attacks are so very sudden, appear to be unprovoked, and are often disabling.
Panic attacks can occur at any time, even during sleep. An attack generally peaks within 10 minutes, but some symptoms may last much longer.
Once someone has had a panic attack, for example, while driving, shopping in a crowded store, or riding in an elevator, he or she may develop irrational fears, called phobias, about these situations and begin to avoid them. Eventually, the pattern of avoidance and level of anxiety about another attack may reach the point where the individual with panic disorder may be unable to drive or even step out of the house. At this stage, the person is said to have panic disorder with agoraphobia. Thus, panic disorder can have as serious an impact on a person's daily life as other major illnesses, unless the individual receives effective treatment.

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ivan Pavlov
Which brings us to the most famous of the Russian researchers, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936). After studying for the priesthood, as had his father, he switched to medicine in 1870 at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. It should be noted that he walked from his home in Ryazan near Moscow hundreds of miles to St. Petersburg!
In 1879, he received his degree in natural science, and in 1883, his MD. He then went to study at the university of Leipzig in Germany. In 1890, he was offered a position as professor of physiology at his alma mater, the Military Medical Academy, which is where he spent the rest of his life. It was in 1900 that he began studying reflexes, especially the salivary response.
In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology for his work on digestion, and in 1921, he received the Hero of the Revolution Award from Lenin himself.
Pavlovian (or classical) conditioning builds on reflexes: We begin with an unconditioned stimulus and an unconditioned response -- a reflex! We then associate a neutral stimulus with the reflex by presenting it with the unconditioned stimulus. Over a number of repetitions, the neutral stimulus by itself will elicit the response! At this point, the neutral stimulus is renamed the conditioned stimulus, and the response is called the conditioned response.
Or, to put it in the form that Pavlov observed in his dogs, some meat powder on the tongue makes a dog salivate. Ring a bell at the same time, and after a few repetitions, the dog will salivate upon hearing the bell alone -- without being given the meat powder!
Pavlov agreed with Sekhenov that there was inhibition as well as excitation. When the bell is rung many times with no meat forthcoming, the dog eventually stops salivating at the sound of the bell. That’s extinction. But, just give him a little meat powder once, and it is as if he had never had the behavior extinguished: He is right back to salivating to the bell. This spontaneous recovery strongly suggests that the habit has been there all alone. The dog had simply learned to inhibit his response.
Pavlov, of course, could therefore condition not only excitation but inhibition. You can teach a dog that he is NOT getting meat just as easily as you can teach him that he IS getting meat. For example, one bell could mean dinner, and another could mean dinner is over. If the bells, however, were too similar, or were rung simultaneously, many dogs would have something akin to a nervous breakdown, which Pavlov called an experimental neurosis.
In fact, Pavlov classified his dogs into four different personalities, ala the ancient Greeks: Dogs that got angry were choleric, ones that fell asleep were phlegmatic, ones that whined were melancholy, and the few that kept their spirits up were sanguine! The relative strengths of the dogs’ abilities to activate their nervous system and calm it back down (excitation and inhibition) were the explanations. These explanations would be used later by Hans Eysenck to understand the differences between introverts and extraverts!
Another set of terms that comes from Pavlov are the first and second signal systems. The first signal system is where the conditioned stimulus (a bell) acts as a “signal” that an important event is to occur -- i.e. the unconditioned stimulus (the meat). The second signal system is when arbitrary symbols come to stand for stimuli, as they do in human language.