Psychology Debate Guide
From PhiloWiki
- Psychology (Gk: psyche, soul or mind + logos, speech) is an academic and applied field involving the study of the mind, brain, and behavior, both human and nonhuman. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.
- Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science in part because it involves studying the mental processes and behavior of individuals (alone or in groups) rather than the behavior of the groups or aggregates themselves. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behavior and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves, though the subfield of neuropsychology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they have subjectively produced.
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Psychology from Wikipedia |
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Psyche
- What is the psyche?
- What are the components of a psyche?
- Defined analytically, that is by what they do vs. how or why they do it, (non-teleogical thinking vs. teleogical thinking) the components of the psyche include the persona, the psyche, consciousness, the unconscious, and the collective unconscious.
Persona
- What is the persona?
- It describes the unconscious or conscious face or mask we put on for others depending upon conditions or events. It is also the image perceived by others for which they bear some responsibility. It is the root of the word `personality.'
- How do we consciously and unconsciously project ourselves to others?
Analytical view
The mask, i.e., the ad hoc adopted attitude, I have called the persona, which was the name for the masks worn by actors in antiquity. The man who identifies with this mask, I would call "personal" as opposed to "individual..." "... The persona is thus a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of adaption or personal convenience, but is by no means identical with individuality.- Carl Jung
What part of our psyche is the receptacle for conscious perception? If an object or subject is raised to consciousness, it has been related to the Ego.
Also the ego includes the conscious image of one's self. When we reflect upon ourselves, the Ego is the image with which we call ourselves. It is also the focal point which objects of perception must relate. It is not the Self in total.
Two psychologists, one named Joe and the other Harry developed a model for views of one's self called the Johari window. With it they demonstrated two windows of the ego, the side which we show to the public and the side (for whatever reasons) we wish to keep private. There is more to our Self than that, however. There is the side of which we are unaware but others see quite easily, and the unknown, both representing the realm of our unconscious.
By ego I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the centre of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity... But inasmuch as the ego is only the centre of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely one complex among other complexes. I therefore distinguish between the ego and the self, since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche which includes the unconscious.- Carl Jung
Consciousness
Consciousness is the term used to describe everything of which we are currently aware. More accurately, everything related and perceived by the Ego. There are relations to the Ego that are not perceived and therefore are `unconscious.'
Analytical view
Consciousness as used in this section is restricted to the way Analytical psychologists use the term. However such things as the nature of consciousness and that Ego may not be the only lens by which consciousness is channeled; that the transcendent function, for example may not be so much an aspect (archetype) of the Unconscious but a generally under appreciated aspect of consciousness itself, is open to interpretation.
Unconscious
Analytical view
...in my view the unconscious is a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. My justification for speaking of the existence of unconscious processes at all is derived simply and solely from experience, and in particular from psychopathological experience, where we have undoubted proof...the ego knows nothing of the existence of numerous psychic complexes, and the next moment a simple hypnotic procedure is sufficient to bring the lost contents back to memory.- Carl Jung
Collective unconscious
Some may also consider the soul and the spirit.
- What are the Psychological Functions?
- The psyche can both gather or acquire information and judge it.
- What is perception?
- It is the name of the information gathering functions of the psyche acquired through the senses or intuition. Information acquired via the senses have an immediate, or a here and now quality such as the object “Is or Is Not”. Information acquired through Intuition is broader in the time frame as well as the spacial considerations. An intuitive perception may enable one to connect dots among an extremely complex situation that would not be perceived by a sensation perception. Perceptions are not judgments.
- By what analytically defined vehicle does the collective of our species impart influence over the individual?
Analytical view
The phalanx appears to work through the collective unconscious.
We know that with certain arrangement of atoms we might have what we would call a bar of iron. Certain other arrangements of atoms plus a mysterious principle make a living cell. Now the living cell is very sensitive to outside stimuli or tropisms. A further arrangement of cells and a very complex one may make a unit we call a man. That has been our final unit. But there have been mysterious things which could not be explained if man is the final unit. He also arranges himself into larger units, which I called the phalanx. The phalanx has its own memory--memory of the great tides when the moon was close, memory of starvations when the food in the world was exhausted. Memory of methods when numbers of his units had to be destroyed for the good of the whole, memory of the history of itself.- John Steinbeck
Behaviorism
- What is behavior as it relates to psychology?
- What are the basic principles of behaviorist theory?
- What is their usual method?
- Why is behaviorism not a legitimate, complete, or useful “psychology”? What is missing?
- How do we compare the Individual against the statistically defined norm?
