What is Psychology?

The first thing I notice about the word psychology is how difficult it is to spell. Does the "y" go before the "s" or after, and how many c's and h's are there exactly? Other than that, growing up, I always knew of psychiatrists as my father. When I was in kindergarten, we would have a surprise parent guest reader every week. Before the parent came in, the teacher would tell our class three facts about the parent, and we had to guess if it was ours or not. This time, the first two facts sounded a lot like my dad, but the third fact was "I help people with their feelings and how to understand them for my job." I put my hand down, because I didn't think that my dad did that for a living. Surprise, surprise, my dad walked through the door, and I got my first real understanding of psychiatry/psychology.

Now that I've grown up (a little bit), I see psychology as the study of the mind. However, it is not solely about the different mental illnesses that one can have, it's also about personality and how different parts of the brain correlate to different emotions and functions. I've heard a lot of about right-brained and left-brained people, and I believe that relates to psychology as well, though I'm not sure on the specific details surrounding it yet. I also remember being as old as a freshman and hearing the stereotype that you have to be "crazy" to go to a psychologist. I used to think this for a while, but now I realize that psychologists are there to help people. I've been through some rough periods in my life that I'm not ashamed to talk about, and that I don't feel should be hidden. At the beginning of this year, someone very close to me passed away, and I went to a psychologist to help sort through my emotions. It helped me, and I think that it's the right decision for some people. That may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's important to study what psychologists do with their knowledge of the brain as well.

I first asked my friend who took Psychology last year what it was and she replied with "I'd define it as the study of why we do the things we do." This is a very succinct, simple way of putting it, which broadens the field in my mind and makes it all the more interesting.

I then asked my dad (a psychiatrist) what psychology is, and he said: "The study of the mind, thoughts, actions, emotions, personality, stress management. I'm smaaarrrttt." I laughed at the ending, but I think it really shows that psychology can be a very broad field, and one that I am excited to learn more about.