Reference: The Book of Subject Clearing
The following summaries and definitions are an effort to understand the fundamentals of Psychology using the approach of Subject Clearing (SC).
To find a word simply use search (CTRL-F). For original definitions in this subject please consult APA Dictionary of Psychology, or other texts available on Psychology. If you feel that some basic term should be included here, then please let me know.
Research using Perplexity AI has been very helpful in preparing these summaries.
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Psychology in Ancient Civilizations
The ancient world developed remarkably sophisticated frameworks for understanding the mind and mental illness, with significant variations between Eastern and Western traditions, yet surprising commonalities in their evolution from supernatural to naturalistic explanations.
- Vedic India: The Integration of Spirit, Mind, and Body
- Ancient China: The Harmonious Flow of Qi and Spirit
- Buddhism: The Phenomenology of Mental Defilement
- Ancient Greece: From Divine Madness to Brain Disease
- Ancient Rome: Clinical Psychiatry and Humane Treatment
- Synthesis: Common Patterns and Divergent Paths
- Psychology Timeline West (Ancient history – BCE)
- Psychology Timeline East (Ancient history – BCE)
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Psychology During First Mellenium
The first millennium of the Common Era witnessed profound transformations in how human societies conceptualized and addressed mental illness. This period saw the gradual divergence of Western and Eastern approaches, shaped by distinct philosophical traditions, religious frameworks, and medical paradigms. While the West experienced an oscillation between naturalistic Greco-Roman medicine and Christian supernatural interpretations, the East developed sophisticated psychological systems rooted in Ayurvedic holism, Buddhist cognitive therapy, and eventually, the revolutionary medical humanism of the Islamic Golden Age.
- The Western Trajectory (1st–10th century CE)
- The Eastern Trajectory (1st–10th century CE)
- The Islamic Revolution (1st–10th century CE)
- Comparative Analysis (1st–10th century CE)
- Psychology Timeline West (1st–10th century CE)
- Psychology Timeline East (1st–10th century CE)
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Psychology During Second Mellenium
11th – 18 Century CE
The period from the 11th to 18th centuries CE witnessed divergent yet interconnected trajectories in psychological thought across civilizations. Western psychology evolved from medieval scholasticism through Renaissance humanism to Enlightenment empiricism, gradually shifting from theological frameworks toward naturalistic observation. Concurrently, Eastern traditions—particularly Islamic, Indian, and Chinese—developed sophisticated holistic models emphasizing the integration of mind, body, and spirit. Islamic scholars synthesized Greek philosophy with Qur’anic principles, Indian thinkers refined yogic and Vedantic conceptions of consciousness, and Chinese philosophers integrated Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist insights. By the 18th century, Western psychology had laid groundwork for scientific methodology while Eastern approaches maintained comprehensive wellness paradigms that modern psychology would later rediscover.
- Western Psychological Development (11-18th century)
- Eastern Psychological Development (11-18th century)
- Comparative Analysis (11-18th century)
- Psychology Timeline (11th–18th century)
Modern Period
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Subject Clearing
PSYCHE
Psyche literally means “breath” that refers to the state of living. In the state of living an inherent power of spirit is regulated by the mind, and manifested by the body. What distinguishes the concept of psyche from narrower terms like “mind” or “brain” is its resistance to purely mechanistic or reductionist interpretation. The psyche, in its full philosophical meaning, encompasses the mysterious dimension of human experience—the subjective, the qualitative, the meaningful, the spiritual—that cannot be fully captured by neuro-scientific description of neural mechanisms alone.
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology is the scientific or objective study of the psyche. It is actually the study of thoughts, feelings, and behavior and how these processes are affected by the environment, physical states, and mental states. The Western psychology focuses on individual organisms. The Eastern psychology focuses on universal consciousness.
WILHELM WUNDT
Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1930) is known as the “Founder of Modern Psychology” and the “Father of Experimental Psychology”. He established the first laboratory in the world that was dedicated to Experimental Psychology, particularly investigations on the senses and perceptions. Wundt used the method of Introspection to investigate psychological phenomena. This involved the subject’s observation and reporting of his own inner thoughts and sensations, and was very difficult to master. Although Wundt’s theories and methods fell out of favor in the 1920’s, his greatest contribution was to demonstrate that psychology could become a true science.
STRUCTURALISM
Structuralism was a school of thought that sought to identify the components (structure) of the mind—the mind was considered the key element to psychology at this point. Structuralists believed that the way to learn about the brain and its functions was to break the mind down into its most basic elements. They believed, the whole is equal to the sum of the parts. Wilhelm Wundt, who is considered the pioneer Structuralist, set up the very first psychological laboratory in 1879. He used a technique called introspection to try to understand the conscious mind.
INTROSPECTION
Introspection is the process of “looking inward” and examining one’s self and one’s own actions in order to gain insight. This was a central component to the early days of psychology. Wundt and other psychologists had people introspect and then report on their feelings, thoughts, etc.
WILLIAM JAMES
William James (1842 – 1910) was a psychologist and philosopher, and was recognized for writing the Principles of Psychology, which is considered to be a monumental work in the history of psychology. James is known for the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, according to which, an emotion is simply the mind’s interpretation of certain physiological processes that occur as a response to certain stimuli. For example, when exposed to a stimulus such as a bear, our nervous system reacts with an increased heart rate, a rush of adrenaline, or muscle tension, and our perception of those changes is what is referred to as emotion of fear. He introduced concepts like the “stream of consciousness,” emphasizing the mind’s continuous, dynamic flow.
FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism was the psychological school of thought pioneered by William James, that followed Structuralism. It moved away from focusing on the structure of the mind to looking at the purpose of consciousness and how it is related to behavior. It asked how mental processes help organisms adapt, survive, and solve problems in their environment. Functionalists studied the utility of traits like memory, emotions, and decision-making aiding adaptation and leading to practical applications in education and behaviorism.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
William James’s “stream of consciousness” (introduced in The Principles of Psychology, 1890) describes the human mind as a continuously flowing, indivisible, and ever-changing process rather than a collection of disjointed thoughts. It emphasizes that consciousness is personal, selective, and always in flux, blending past and present experiences.
SIGMUND FREUD
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is known as the Father of Psychoanalysis, a method for treating psychological pathology by means of dialogue between the patient and the psychoanalyst. One of Freud’s most important contributions is the idea that the unconscious mind holds the key to understanding conscious thoughts and behavior, and the role that dreams play in unlocking what is hidden or repressed beneath conscious awareness. Freud is also known for proposing a theory of personality based on the Stages of Psychosexual Development. Freud also developed the model of the psyche composed of the Id, Ego, and Superego. Although many people find Freud’s ideas controversial, he was one of the most influential figures in the entire field of psychology.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
In 1900, Sigmund Freud fundamentally altered psychology’s trajectory through his theory of psychoanalysis, detailed in The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud introduced the revolutionary concept of the unconscious mind—the proposition that mental processes and drives operating outside conscious awareness significantly shape behavior, emotions, and personality. One of his most common techniques to bring these thoughts to the consciousness was the use of free association. While many of Freud’s specific theories are viewed skeptically today, his influence on twentieth-century thought across psychology, psychiatry, art, literature, and popular culture remains undeniable.
FREE ASSOCIATION
Free association is a fundamental psychoanalytic technique, where patients express thoughts, feelings, and images as they come to mind without self-censorship. For example, say whatever comes to your mind when I say the word “marriage”. Don’t limit or try to evaluate your responses, just say everything that pops into your head. The person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. It acts as a tool to uncover unconscious thoughts, identify unresolved emotional conflicts, and facilitate psychological, emotional release.
BEHAVIORISM
Emerging in the early twentieth century, behaviorism represented a dramatic departure from both consciousness-focused and psychoanalytic approaches. Pioneered by figures such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner, behaviorism rejected investigation of internal mental states as unscientific, focusing exclusively on observable behavior and how it could be shaped through learning, conditioning, and reinforcement. Behaviorism made psychology more rigorously experimental and predictive, though its methodological conservatism limited understanding of cognition. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by a certain stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual’s history. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.
BEHAVIOR
Behavior is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. This means that all behavior is the result or either unthinking reaction, or a thinking response (or a mixture of the two), to something in the environment.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
During the 1960s, cognitive psychology emerged as a major perspective, influenced by advances in information theory and the work of psychologists like Jean Piaget and Albert Bandura. This perspective shifted focus to mental processes—memory, thinking, problem-solving, language, and decision-making—demonstrating that internal cognitive processes could be studied scientifically through creative experimental design. Cognitive psychology has grown substantially, providing the theoretical foundation for evidence-based treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which targets the interplay between thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT)
CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (such as thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. The key cognitive therapy question is, “What was going through your mind just then?” Other questions are: “Is there overgeneralization?” “Is there some alternative explanation?” “Is there a logic to that?” When the person looks at the automatic thoughts arising from his thought structure, he starts to get better.
COGNITION
Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge.
BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
The biological perspective in psychology explains behavior, thoughts, and emotions through physical, physiological, and genetic mechanisms. It focuses on how brain structures, neurotransmitters, nervous system functioning, and genetics shape human actions and mental health, often using scientific methods like brain imaging to understand these processes. Contemporary research demonstrates that neuroscience and psychology work synergistically: understanding neural mechanisms has revolutionized clinical psychology by clarifying the biological bases of psychiatric disorders and facilitating development of more effective treatments.
NERVOUS SYSTEM
The nervous system is a complex system of nerves which allows you to register touch, move, breathe, feel and think. The nervous system includes your brain, spinal cord, and the nerves that travel throughout your body. It acts like the switchboard of the body.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
Evolutionary psychology is a field that studies how the mind and behavior are shaped by natural selection, with the goal of understanding the “ultimate” causes of psychological traits. It operates on the principle that the brain is a set of information-processing machines, or adaptations, that evolved to solve problems of survival and reproduction faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This framework explains why certain psychological characteristics and behavioral tendencies persist across human populations.
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
This is the psychological perspective popularized by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (hierarchy of needs) that emphasizes the human capacity for choice and growth. The overriding assumption is that humans have free will and are not simply fated to behave in specific ways or are zombies blindly reacting to their environments. So, the Humanists stated that the subject matter or psychology (what psychology should focus on) is the human subjective experience of the world—how humans experience things, why they experience things, etc.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Positive Psychology is a relatively new branch of applied psychology started in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mikhaly Csikszentmihalyi. This field “seeks to nurture genius and talent” rather than focusing solely on the treatment of mental illness as a means of making human existence more rewarding and fulfilling. The founders of this movement do not intend to replace traditional psychology, but to expand it through the encouragement of positive traits, relationships and institutions.
SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
The sociocultural perspective in psychology emphasizes that human behavior, thoughts, and development are profoundly shaped by social interactions, cultural norms, values, language, and shared beliefs, moving beyond individual cognition to see people as products of their environment, with Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theories (like the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding) being foundational, highlighting how learning occurs through guidance from “more knowledgeable others” within a cultural context, with applications in education, mental health, and understanding diverse experiences.
PURE (THEORETICAL) PSYCHOLOGY
Pure (Theoretical) Psychology encompasses foundational areas establishing general principles:
- General Psychology: Investigates fundamental psychological principles through the study of normal adult human behavior
- Abnormal Psychology: Describes and explains aberrant behavior, examining causes, symptoms, syndromes, and treatments of behavioral pathology
- Developmental Psychology: Studies how individuals grow, change, and develop across the lifespan from infancy through old age
- Social Psychology: Examines how social contexts, group dynamics, relationships, and cultural factors influence cognition and behavior
- Personality Psychology: Investigates individual differences in stable patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior
- Cognitive Psychology: Studies mental processes enabling thinking, memory, language, decision-making, and problem-solving
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
Applied Psychology translates theoretical knowledge into practical interventions addressing real-world challenges:
- Clinical Psychology: Assesses, diagnoses, and treats mental health disorders through evidence-based therapeutic techniques including CBT, psychoanalysis, and mindfulness interventions.
- Counseling Psychology: Focuses on helping individuals navigate life transitions, relationship challenges, and personal development, emphasizing growth and resilience rather than pathology remediation.
- Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology: Applies psychological principles to improve workplace productivity, employee satisfaction, leadership development, and organizational culture.
- Forensic Psychology: Applies psychology to the legal system, including criminal profiling, assessment of defendant mental state, and expert testimony in legal proceedings.
- Educational Psychology: Addresses student learning, academic performance, and social-emotional development within educational settings.
- Health Psychology: Examines relationships between psychological factors and physical health, addressing stress, behavior change, and chronic disease management.
- Sports Psychology: Helps athletes optimize performance and develop mental resilience.
The discipline encompasses many additional specialized areas, including environmental psychology, military psychology, media psychology, organizational consulting, and emerging fields at the intersection of psychology and technology.
CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Modern psychology rests upon rigorous adherence to the scientific method—a systematic process of observation, hypothesis formation, experimentation, data analysis, and theory refinement. This methodological commitment distinguishes contemporary psychology from earlier philosophical speculation about mind and conduct.
Psychologists employ diverse research designs appropriate to their questions:
- Experimental Research: Manipulates one or more independent variables while measuring effects on dependent variables, enabling causal inference but requiring careful control of confounding factors.
- Correlational Research: Examines relationships between variables without experimental manipulation, useful for identifying associations but limiting causal conclusions.
- Descriptive Research: Systematically observes and documents behavior in natural settings or through surveys, providing rich contextual understanding without causal claims.
- Qualitative Methods: Conduct in-depth interviews and analysis of verbal/narrative data to develop hermeneutic understanding of human experience and motivation.
These methodologies employ both quantitative approaches (statistical analysis of numerical data) and qualitative techniques (thematic analysis of narrative material), with researchers selecting methods aligned to their specific research questions.
The scientific method’s application in psychology addresses fundamental epistemological challenges: many phenomena of psychological interest—consciousness, emotion, motivation, personality—are subjective and cannot be directly observed externally. Psychologists overcome this limitation through behavioral observations, self-report measures, physiological recordings, and neuro-imaging, collectively generating empirical evidence that validates or falsifies theoretical propositions.
INTEGRATION WITH NEUROSCIENCE
Contemporary psychology increasingly integrates neuroscientific findings, reflecting recognition that mental processes emerge from—and cannot be fully understood apart from—neural mechanisms. Advances in neuroimaging have revolutionized understanding of psychiatric illness, enabling comparison of brain structure and function between healthy individuals and those with mental disorders, thereby clarifying neurobiological bases of pathology and guiding treatment development. This integration demonstrates embodied cognition: visualization of activities activates neural regions as though the activity were occurring, explaining how mental practice improves performance and how observational learning operates through mirror neurons that fire when we observe others’ behavior. This neuropsychological understanding has profound implications: cognitive practice literally reshapes brain organization through neuroplasticity, providing neuroscientific basis for why psychological interventions—from deliberate practice to cognitive therapy—produce lasting behavioral and cognitive change. (See Biological Perspective above.)
CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS AND SOCIAL IMPACT
Psychology’s applied fields directly impact daily life across multiple domains. Clinical psychology addresses mental health through evidence-based treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and personality disorders. Counseling psychology helps individuals navigate career transitions, relationship challenges, and personal development. I/O psychology shapes workplace culture, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness, influencing the professional lives of billions of workers. Forensic psychology contributes to criminal justice through behavioral profiling and risk assessment. Health psychology influences public health through understanding stress physiology and promoting behavior change for chronic disease prevention.
Emerging technological integration represents contemporary psychology’s frontier. Teletherapy expands mental health treatment access; mobile applications and wearable devices enable continuous monitoring of psychological and physiological variables; artificial intelligence-driven therapeutic tools provide interventions for vulnerable populations; behavioral analytics extract psychological insights from digital activity patterns; and computational modeling tests theoretical predictions at unprecedented scale and precision.
CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES
Modern psychology is fundamentally pluralistic. Few contemporary psychologists identify rigidly with single theoretical schools; instead, most integrate insights from multiple perspectives while specializing in particular domains. This theoretical eclecticism reflects recognition that human behavior emerges from biological, cognitive, emotional, social, and cultural factors operating simultaneously—no single perspective captures complete truth.
Psychology maintains fundamental commitment to understanding behavior for three complementary purposes: description (characterizing what occurs), prediction (forecasting future behavior under specified conditions), and intervention (modifying behavior to improve human welfare). This tripartite mission—simultaneously scientific and applied—positions psychology as uniquely positioned to address complex societal challenges requiring integration of biological mechanism, individual psychology, social dynamics, and cultural context.
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