Paula Cantolina, age 12, of Morrisdale, Pa.,for her question:
WHAT IS A PSYCHOLOGIST?
Man has always wondered about the reasons for his thoughts and actions. The word psychology was used to identify this area. Psychology comes from two Greek words: psyche, which means mind or soul, and logos, which means study of. Until the late 1800s, the field of psychology was an area of study within philosophy. The mind was thought to be located in a specific part of the body.
Psychology is the science that studies why human beings and animals behave as they do. A person working in the field wants to know the reasons for a person's motives, feelings, thoughts and emotions.
Psychology as a science is based on careful observation and experimentation that is generally considered to have been started by a German philosopher named Wilhelm Wundt in 1879.
Today psychologists try to establish principles that can be used to explain, predict and control or change behavior. They follow the general scientific method used by physicists, chemists and other physical sciences of experiments, observation, case histories and surveys.
Psychology is classed with biology, sociology and anthropology as one of the behavioral sciences although it is also closely related to psychiatry.
Psychiatry is a medical science that deals almost exclusively with mental illness. Psychology, however, studies all kinds of human behavior, both normal and abnormal.
Most psychologists have a M.A. or Ph.D. degree rather than medical‑school credentials.
Psychology includes many areas of inquiry. Clinical psychology, for example, deals with normal and abnormal behavior and with an individual's psychological adjustment to himself and his environment.
Developmental psychology is the study of changes in human behavior from birth to old age while educational psychology applies principles of psychology to the educational process.
Motivation psychology concerns the basic forces that impel people or animals to act and do what they do while social psychology studies relationships among people in groups: the roles of language, communication and propaganda; and the formation of public opinion.
To become a psychologist, a student should major in psychology while studying for his bachelor's degree in college. It then takes another year to earn a master's degree.
Once a psychologist has his master's degree, it generally takes him another five years of postgraduate study to earn a doctor's degree in psychology.
Most graduate students in clinical psychology must intern for one year in psychological clinics, just as medical students intern in hospitals.