Hello. My name is Matt and this is Simply Psych.
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Welcome to the world of psychology.
Together we're going to explore the
recesses of our minds,
discover human experience and what makes us
us,
and maybe have a little fun in the process.
So, what is psychology, you ask. Join me
and my assistant Simmons as we discover this
wonderful, wonderful world.
Let's get into this. 
So what we're talking about today is psychology. What is psychology?
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Now if youi break the word psychology down, it's a Greek word.
"ology" refers to the study of
something
and "psyche" refers to the mind or soul.
When you put those things together then
you're talking about the study of the mind.
Now the mind is a pretty big complicated thing. So what is the mind?
Is the mind the brain or is the mind
something else completely different than
the brain?
Why, I think most of us would probably
agree that the brain is necessary for the
mind to exist.
But when we really get down to what the
mind is,
we have a hard time defining it. Some
psychologists suggest
the mind is what the brain does. 
So the brain's functions make up what the
mind is.
So to help us understand the mind and to
help us understand psychology better, we
need to understand the definition.
The current definition of psychology is
the science of human behavior
and mental processes. Well let's unpack that a little bit.
Tthe science refers to, obviously, a
scientific study.
Or more specifically, a method for trying
to understand the world.
More on that in a bit. Human behavior
means that we're talking about humans
and not about something else. I think
that's pretty obvious. We know what humans are, right?
Now we're talking about human behavior
so obviously what we do,
how we act, that's going to be a major
focus 
of our understanding of psychology. So when we get to
the idea of mental processes
we have to understand what a mental
process is.
Well obviously it's a process of the
mind. Now there are lots of different
mental processes.
Take for instance, the process of cognition
or thinking. Well, like for instance
decision-making,
or solving problems. That's a mental process.
How about learning?
Learning is a mental process. Take for
instance the issue of memory.
How can you learn anything unless you can remember it? And then take memory for instance.
Wait. Didn't I already say that? Other mental processes, like emotion,
the way we feel or stress and how we respond to stressors in our environment.
Or states of consciousness or sensation
and perception.
All of these things are contained within
the mind
which is a part of our brain. 
So understanding the definition of
psychology being a science of human
behavior and mental processes
helps to unpack a little bit what the
mind
actually is, and what the brain actually does.
But if we're going to understand it even
better, we need to go back in history
and really take a look at the historical
perspective
of psychology. A lot of people think that
psychology is
a very young science that only goes back
about a hundred and thirty years.
But actually psychology goes back
even further than that. We can go back
 
twenty-five hundred years to the time of the ancient Greeks to really start to see
when psychology was beginning to form.
Before the Greeks there were really no thinkers.
Everyone just kinda lived and
did and whenever. But they didn't really
think about anything. It was the Greeks
that came on
and the Greeks who said let's think
about human experience
and try to understand why humans are
the way that they are.
And for hundreads of years the Greeks were thinking, and you have people like
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle
who were really trying to understand
human experience.
After a few hundred years of the Greek
Empire then another Empire came on the scene.
The Roman Empire. Now the Roman Empire,
they weren't all that big on thinking.
They were big on conquering other
people,
eating a lot of food, having a lot of sex. But
specifically building
things. You've heard of roads, aqueducts, the Coliseum. This is Roman
culture and Rome was all about building
things 
and not about thinking all that much. From about 150 BCE up into the 300's
the Roman Empire was the main force
in western civilized world. After the
Roman Empire completed the majority of
its reign,
up came the Catholic Church. Now the Catholic Church had really one answer
for why we are the way that we are and that was God.
Now this may not be a bad answer
necessarily but it did not allow for
exploration from other people. The only
people in the church that were learned
were the priests. Priests did all the
reading, priests did all the studying
and so if somebody had a question, the
priests gave them an answer.
It didn't allow people to study human
experience and what the mind does.
We call this time period that the Church
reigned supreme in the western civilization
the dark ages, primarily because people
were left in the dark.
The church had all the answers and the
people were not allowed to even search
for them.
Then in 1517 there was a man who came on the scene who decided he did not agree
with this principle of the Church.
He believed that people have the right to
determine for themselves how they should live.
His name was Martin Luther. And he walked up the steps to his church and he nailed
95 pieces on the door basically
stating
that the Church did not have supreme
reign over everyone.
This started the beginning of what we
call the Protestant Reformation.
A lot of people were scared of the Church
until Martin Luther did this.
And then after Martin Luther did this, the
people gained courage.
Were empowered to go ahead and say, you know what?
I'm going to search out for myself. One
of the groups in there were what we call
empiricists. Empiricism is the concept
of we only know
what we know through observation
and experimentation. From empiricism
comes what we call today science. So three hundred and  fifty years later
a man by the name of Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, Germany conducted the first
psychological experiment. It was a little
ball at the top of a tube and when it would fall,
somebody would see it fall and push
a button.
judging the reaction time in the brain.
That was the first experiment
that actually measured a
person's psychology, the way that their
mind works.
That was about a hundred and fifty years
ago. From that point forward
time moved fast. Wilhelm Wundt had a
student named Edward Titchener who was
friends with a guy name Sigmund Freud,
You probably have heard that name. Sigmund Freud led the charge when it came to
psychology. He was very, very influential.
After him came Ivan Pavlov who studied
behavior in dogs.
And then Skinner who studied behavior in
rats and in children.
And then Erickson who really took a look
at the entire life span
and how we develop over time. And then
Piaget who studied children
and how children learn and construct
knowledge. And then Maslow who studied how
people need to fulfil their human needs.
And this brings us up to the modern-day.
A combination of our entire history of
psychology and human experience
all encapsulated into this understanding
of psychology
the we have now. And through this journey
we're going to explore all the different
facets , the different people, the different
concepts of psychology
and through this you will learn how the
mind works.
Let's take a seat.
Feels good, doesn't it? Well, hold onto that
feeling,
because this journey has just begun.
Beginning with Aristotle, moving to Freud,
up until present day with you and me. We
are going to discover how much the
history of psychology
has left a legacy for us to explore.
Till next time...
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