What is psychology?

Any knowledge discipline is hard to define.

Firstly, because it evolves continuously. Secondly, because the range of phenomena it studies cannot be captured by any one definition. This is even more true of psychology.

Long time back, students like yourself were told that the term psychology is derived from two Greek words psyche meaning soul and logos meaning science or study of a subject. Thus,psychology was a study of the soul or mind.

But since then it has moved away considerably from this focus and established itself as a scientific discipline which deals with processes underlying human experience and behaviour.

The range of phenomena it studies, some of which we mentioned above, are spread over
several levels, viz. individual, dyadic (two person) group, and organisational. They also have biological as well as social bases.

Naturally, therefore, the methods required to study them also vary greatly depending on the phenomenon one wants to study. A discipline is defined both in terms of what it studies and how it studies. In fact, more in terms of how or method/s it uses.

Keeping this in view, psychology is defined formally as a science which studies mental processes, experiences and behaviour in different contexts. In doing
so, it uses methods of biological and social sciences to obtain data systematically.

It makes sense of these data so that they can be organised as knowledge. Let us try to understand the three terms used in the definition, namely, mental processes,
experience, and behaviour.

When we say experiences are internal to the experiencing person, we refer to states of
consciousness or awareness or mental processes. We use our mental processes when
we think or try to solve a problem, to know or remember something. One level at which these mental processes are reflected is the brain activity. As we think or solve a mathematical problem, our brain activities can be observed using different techniques of brain imaging.

However, we cannot say that brain activities and mental processes are the same, although they are interdependent. Mental activities and neural activities are mutually overlapping processes but, they are not identical. Unlike the brain, the mind does not have a physical structure or has a location. Mind emerges and evolves as our interactions and experiences in this world get dynamically organised in the
form of a system which is responsible for the occurrence of various mental processes.
Brain activities provide important clues to how our mind functions. But the consciousness of our own experiences and mental processes are much more than the
neural or brain activities. Even when we are asleep some mental activities go on. We
dream, and receive some information such as a knock on the door while we are asleep.
Some psychologists have shown that we also learn and remember in our sleep. Mental
processes, such as remembering, learning,knowing, perceiving, feeling are of interest to psychologists. They study these processes trying to understand how the mind works and to help us improve the uses and applications of these mental capacities.