Counseling Psychology

While the counseling psychologist may diagnose, assess, and treat adjustment difficulties, they often address problems which are more moderate than those encountered by the clinical psychologist. Clients of counseling psychologists are people who need help coping with the stresses of everyday life, and the focus is on strengthening their existing resources rather than overcoming disorders or deficiency.

Cross-Cultural Psychology
Cross-cultural psychology is a branch of psychology that looks at how cultural factors influence human behavior. The International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) was established in 1972, and this branch of psychology has continued to grow and develop since that time. Today, increasing numbers of psychologists investigate how behavior differs among various cultures throughout the world.

Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychologists study how characteristics and behaviors first appear and how and when they change. They study the relationships between different types of development, such as cognitive and social, as well as individual variations in development, both normal and deviant. Initially, developmental psychology focused on childhood but was subsequently expanded to cover changes that occur over the entire life span, from the intrauterine environment through childhood, adolescence, middle age, and maturity.

Differential Psychology
The earliest research in the field of differential psychology began in the late nineteenth century with Francis Galton's investigation of the effects of heredity on individual intelligence and his pioneering work in intelligence testing, which was further advanced by James McKeen Cattell and Alfred Binet. It was Binet who developed the first standardized intelligence test. Growth in related areas such as genetics and developmental psychology, as well as advances in psychological testing, all broadened the scope of the field considerably.

Educational Psychology
Educational psychology departments in many universities provide training to educators, school psychologists, and other educational professionals. Applied research in this field focuses on how to improve teaching, solve learning problems, and measure learning ability and progress. Other concerns of educational psychology include cognitive development, the dynamics of pupil behavior, and the psychological atmosphere of the classroom.

Ethology
The pioneering work of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen in the 1930s established a theoretical foundation for ethology, which has had an effect on such wide-ranging disciplines as genetics, anthropology, and political science in addition to psychology. Ethologists believe that an animal must

be studied on its own terms rather than primarily in relation to human beings, with a focus on its normal behavior and environment.

Etiology - The change in theory

Psychological etiology refers to the scientific investigation into the origins of a disorder that cannot be explained biologically. Etiology is complicated by the fact that most disorders have more than one cause. Early etiological theories were the Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic beliefs. Sigmund Freud attributed mental or neurotic disorders to deep-seated or hidden psychic motivations.

Existential Psychology
Existential psychology is an approach to psychology and psychotherapy that is based on several premises, including: understanding that a "whole" person is more than the sum of his or her parts; understanding people by examining their interpersonal relationships, understanding that people have many levels of self-awareness that can be neither ignored nor put into an abstract context, understanding that people have free will and are participants rather than observers in their own lives, and understanding that people's lives have purpose, values, and meaning.

Experimental Psychology
Experimental psychologists work to understand the underlying causes of behavior by studying humans and animals. Animals are studied within and outside laboratory settings for a variety of reasons. A researcher may wish

to learn more about a particular species, to study how different species are interrelated, to investigate the evolutionary significance of certain behaviors, or to learn more about a particular species, to study how different species are interrelated, to investigate the evolutionary significance of certain behaviors, or to learn more about human behavior.

Forensic Psychology
Forensic psychologists often work within the judicial system in such diverse areas as determining an inmate's readiness for parole; evaluation of rehabilitation programs; criminal competency; tort liability and damages; eyewitness testimony and evidence; jury selection; and police training. Forensic psychology may also be employed in other areas of jurisprudence, including patent and trademark disputes, divorce and custody cases, product liability, and taxation.

Gestalt Psychology
The Gestaltists were at odds with the popular school of psychology of the day, known as structuralism, whose proponents believed that the mind consists of units or elements and could be understood by mapping and studying them in combination. The Gestalt psychologists believed that mental experience was dependent not on a simple combination of elements but on the organization and patterning of experience and of one's perceptions.

Health Psychology
Health psychology is a diverse area with a variety of emphases. Medical psychology focuses on the clinical treatment of patients with physical illnesses, offering practical advice people can use in order to improve their

health. While there is special emphasis on psychosomatic disordersthose that have traditionally been most closely related to psychological factors the current trend is toward a holistic perspective that considers all physical health inseparable from a patient's emotional state.

Humanistic Psychology
Humanistic psychology evolved in the 1960s as a reaction to psychodynamic psychology and behaviorism. Humanists objected to the pessimistic view of human nature advocated by psychodynamic psychologists who saw the selfish pursuit of pleasure as the root of all human behavior. They also felt that the behaviorists' beliefs that all human behavior is the product of environmental influences reduced people to the status of machines and did not adequately explain the human experience.

Industrial Psychology
Some industrial psychologists, also called personnel or organizational psychologists, may be employed by companies to administer tests which measure employee aptitudes or skills in hiring and placement programs. Others work for consulting firms which offer their services to companies on a contractual basis to solve specific problems. The projects which they work on may include facilitating interpersonal relationships within a company by training management personnel in human relations skills, analyzing and recommending changes in employee training programs, or conducting research to determine what influences consumers to purchase particular products.

Media Psychology
According to reports the average American household has the television on for about seven hours a day. It is also reported that young people are increasingly turning to the Internet as a form of escape and informationgathering. The movie industry spends billions of dollars on new films every year. Advertising currently has more outlets, like television, billborads, magazines, radio, the Internet, and even movies, than it has ever had in history.

Metapsychology
Metapsychology describes the effort to construct or to postulate a systematic and comprehensive set of general principles encompassing all of psychology, specifically including elements that are theoretical in addition to elements that are considered to have been empirically demonstrated; also known as nomothetic psychology. In classical Freudian psychoanalytical theory, the term metapsychology is used in reference to the analysis of the dynamic (instinctive), topological (association with id, ego, or superego), and economic (allocation of psychic energy) aspects of mental processes.

Occupational Therapist
Occupational therapists help persons with both physical and emotional problems as well as learning difficulties. Although occupational therapy was initially associated with reintegrating veterans of First and Second World Wars into the work force, the term "occupation" used in the context of this profession actually refers to any activity with which persons occupy their time.

Parapsychology
The study of paranormal activities and phenomena has been riddled with controversy since its conception. It is claimed that some people, utilizing senses beyond the ordinary, exhibit powers that cannot be explained by traditional science. Skeptics of the paranormal point to the fact that in over a century since the first serious studies of the paranormal began, usually dated to the opening of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882, no replicable demonstration of any such powers has ever been conducted.

Philosophical Psychology
One of the central questions in philosophical psychology has been the relationship between the mind and body, a perennial area of inquiry throughout the history of philosophy. Other topics considered in this discipline include memory, perception, and consciousness; the nature of the self; the existence of free will; the relationship between thought and emotion; and so-called irrational phenomena, such as self-deception.

Physiological Psychology
The area of experimental known as physiological psychology has evolved in the 1990s. Increasingly, the field is being referred to as behavioral neuroscience, replacing physiological psychology and biological psychology. Nonetheless, the goals of psychologists in this field remain the same: to utilize basic research to explain behavior in physiological terms, working on the assumption that for every behavioral event there is a corresponding physical event or series of events.

Psychiatry/Psychiatrist
Psychiatrists treat patients privately and in hospital settings through a combination of psychotherapy and medication. There are about 41,000 practicing psychiatrists in the United States. Their training consists of four years of medical school, followed by one year of internship and at least three years of psychiatric residency.

Psychoanalysis
Developed in Vienna, Austria, by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), psychoanalysis is based on an approach in which the therapist helps the patient better understand him- or herself through examination of the deep personal feelings, relationships, and events that have shaped motivations and behavior.

Psychology/Psychologist
As psychology has grown and changed throughout its history, it has been defined in numerous ways. As early as 400 B.C., the ancient Greeks philosophized about the relationship of personality characteristics to physiological traits. Since then, philosophers have proposed theories to explain human behavior.

Psychophysics
Psychophysics originated with the research of Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), who first studied the relationship between incoming physical stimuli and the responses to them. Psychophysicists have generally used two approaches in studying our sensitivity to stimuli around us: measuring the absolute threshold or discovering the difference threshold.

Psychosurgery
Psychosurgery involves severing or otherwise disabling areas of the brain to treat a personality disorder, behavior disorder or other mental illness. The most common form of psychosurgery is the lobotomy, where the nerves connecting the frontal lobes of the brain and the thalamus or hypothalamus are severed

School Psychology
Developed in 1896 at the University of Pennsylvania in a clinic that studied and treated children considered morally or mentally defective, the field of school psychology today includes 30,000 psychologists, most of whom work in educational systems throughout the United States. School psychologists, in various roles within the school systems they serve, focus on the development and adjustment of the child in his or her school setting.

Social Psychology
Social psychology is the study of human interaction, including communication, cooperation, competition, leadership, and attitude development. Although the first textbooks on the subject of social psychology were published in the early 1900s, much of the foundation for social psychology studied in the 1990s is based on the work of the behavioral psychologists of the 1930s.

Sociobiology
In his 1975 work, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, entomologist Edward O. Wilson first coined the term "sociobiology" to create a new field of study combining biology and social sciences, especially anthropology and

sociology. Sociobiologists study the biological nature of human behavior and personality according to the tenet that all social behavior has a biological basis.

Sports Psychology
Sportswhich involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and playprovide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. When psychologists began studying sports in the 1930s and 1940s, they focused on motor performance and the acquisition of motor skills. Sports psychology emerged as a distinct discipline in the 1960s, dominated by theories of social psychology.

Statistics in Psychology
Psychologists rely heavily on statistics to help assess the meaning of the measurements they make. Sometimes the measurements involve individuals who complete psychological tests; at other times, the measurements involve statistics that describe general properties of groups of people or animals. In psychological testing, the psychologist may interpret test results in light of norms, or the typical results, provided from previous testing.