IntroductionCHAPTER 1

The term psychology was first encountered in philosophical books of the 16th century. It was formed from two Greek words ‘Psyche’ (soul) and ‘logos’ (doctrine). By soul, was meant the principle underlying all the phenomena of mental and spiritual life.

The modern ideas about mind and its functioning were derived from Greek philosophy. One of the first stones in the foundation of psychology as a science was laid by the ancient Greek physician Alcmaeon in 6th century BC, who proposed that, ‘mental life is a function of the brain’. This idea provides a basis to understand human psyche even today. The other notable Greek philosophers are Hippocrates (460-370 BC), Socrates (469-399 BC), Plato (428/7-348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC).

Hippocrates known as the father of medicine classifies people, into 4 types on the basis of body humours, viz., Sanguine (blood), Melancholic (black bile), Choleric (yellow bile) and Phlegmatic (phlegm). Socrates recognised mind also in addition to soul. He had analysed the activities of mind in the form of thinking, imagination, memory and dreams. Further, his pupils Plato and Aristotle strengthened and continued the idea of Socrates. However, they did not have much belief in the existence of soul. So they stressed reasoning ability of man and called human being as a rational animal.

Plato was more interested to know the role of mind in controlling human behaviour. He was the progenitor of dualism in psychology. He regarded material and spiritual substances, the body and mind as two independent and antagonistic principles, but he could not clarify his doubt satisfactorily. Plato's dualism was largely overcome by his pupil Aristotle who reunited psychological thought with natural studies and restored its close links with biology and medicine. He forwarded the idea of the inseparability of soul and the living body. He hypothesized that mind is the result of psychological activities and said it is necessary to understand psychological processes including the activities of sense organs which help the individual to experience his environment. This assumption was accessible for verification because of its scientific base. It is true that the brain controls our 3conscious experiences and behaviour. Then came a French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who postulated the existence of soul as a separate entity which is independent of body. He said our body is like an automobile engine which will carry on its work without the supervision of soul and hence the body and soul are separate. He declared that man has a dual nature viz., mental and physical. By this way clarified the doubt raised by Plato. He asserted that the process of doubting is the proof for existence of soul. (Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am). In other words the soul must exist in me, because I can think, and thinking is the main function of soul.

Gradually as the scientific outlook was developed, philosophy started loosing its prominence, so also soul. Then psychology was defined as the ‘the study of mind’. The word mind was less mysterious and vague than soul and hence this definition was continued for some time.

Psychology came into being as a scientific discipline by the establishment of first Institute of Psychology in 1879 at Leipzig in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). It is here the first professional psychologists acquired the skills of experimental work to study the mind. Wundt focussed his experiments as conscious experiences and he replaced the concept of mind with consciousness. He adopted the method of ‘Introspection’.

As the time elapsed, the development of Psychology as an independent science got impetus. Psychologists started discarding the different methods and approaches based on speculation and attempted to provide scientific base to the subject. These efforts resulted in the emergence of different schools of thought like Structuralism, Functionalism, Behaviourism, Gestaltism, Psychoanalysis, Humanistic school, etc. The formulation of these schools has led to various approaches to understand behaviour in their own ways.

A brief analysis of these approaches is as follows:

Some other psychologists influenced by Freud who were known as Neo Freudians, also have contributed a lot to modern psychology. Some of the notable figures are Anna Freud (the daughter of Freud), Karen Horney, Sullivan, Eric Fromm, Erik Erickson, etc.

As stated in the beginning, the history of psychology is very short. But within this short duration of about 150 years, many psychologists have contributed their knowledge to make psychology a science. It is very difficult to present all the names and their contributions. However, keeping in mind the need, only some important developments have been presented here in brief. For more details the interested students may refer other books.

Psychology has been defined in many ways. In ancient days people were analysing the behavioural aspects on the basis of philosophy. They believed that there is a soul in every individual and this is responsible for all our activities. This view led to the 7opinion that the subject matter of psychology must be the study of soul. But this definition could not answer the questions regarding the existence of soul and its accessibility for study. This condition led to a new definition by Greek philosophers who defined psychology as a ‘science of mind’. But this definition was also rejected on the same grounds as soul was rejected. Later, Wilhelm Wundt a psychologist who established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany defined psychology as the study of consciousness. EB Titchener the disciple of Wundt, proposed the method of Introspection to study consciousness. But because of its subjectivity and unscientific method of study, this definition was also rejected.

Gradually, as a result of the development of scientific outlook people started thinking on scientific basis and began to define psychology as a science of behaviour. Finally, it is JB Watson (1913) defined psychology as a science of behaviour of human as well as animal beings. Today this is the most accepted definition. In this definition the term behaviour includes the cognitive activities like thinking, reasoning, intelligence, imagining, memory, etc., conative activities like walking, dancing, fighting, attacking and other action tendencies and also the affective activities like feeling, joy, happiness, sympathy, anger, jealousy, etc. in a person. This definition also includes the behaviour not only of human beings and animals, but also all living organisms and their mental processes.

Hence, today the definition given by JB Watson is accepted in its modified form as “Psychology is the study or science of behaviour of the organism and its mental processes”.

In addition to the above, there are many other applied branches like military psychology, legal psychology/criminal psychology, political psychology, etc.

In this way, psychology has broadened its scope today and gaining more and more importance. It may be expected that in days to come, there cannot be any field of life without the application of psychological principles. Particularly in the field of medicine, for doctors and nurses the knowledge of psychology is very useful and also essential.

Psychology is relevant not only in physical health care, but also highly relevant in the field of mental health. Today we see more and more people are suffering from mental illness. Some patients may have minor problems and others may have serious illness. The knowledge of psychology will help nurses to understand such abnormal behaviours and help the patients in the management and cure. Nurses working in mental hospitals definitely need the full knowledge of general, abnormal, clinical and counselling psychology.

The nurses in community health centres may help people by recognising the mental illness in the early stages and convince them to take appropriate treatment. They can also help people to prevent mental illness by appropriate guidance to deal with stress, anxiety and other life problems.

If the nurse is healthy both physically and psychologically, she can work better and do justice to her profession. But, the nurse is also a human being who has her own emotions, feelings, attitudes, personality characteristics, etc. She has her own limitations also. The knowledge of psychology will help her to understand her strengths and weaknesses. By knowing these aspects, she can try to overcome such weaknesses which affect her work, and she may develop the good personality characteristics and abilities to carry on her responsibilities, and do her duties effectively and efficiently.

Good nursing care also depends upon the ability of a nurse to understand the situations properly, and also in obtaining the 13cooperation of other people concerned. Psychology will help nurses to understand the problematic situations properly, and also helps to understand the people related to nursing care either directly or indirectly, and seek their cooperation in managing her duties.

In this way, psychology is highly relevant to nursing today, particularly because of increasing psychosomatic illnesses due to more and more stressful life situations.

This is a very good and useful method. But the disadvantages here are: (a) There are chances of subjective report, and prejudices of observer may creep in. Sometimes to observe the natural behaviour the observer may have to spend more time, energy and money.

The advantage of this method is that, the results of the experiment may be verified by repetition of the same experiment. But this method has some demerits also. They are: (a) Conducting experiment is very expensive and time consuming, (b) another feature is that the experiments cannot be conducted outside the laboratory.