Psychology is a very broad term used for a very big subject and many ideas of why people think and behave in the way that they do. Psychology is simply the scientific study of brain and behaviour. In order to explain behaviour of humans and non-humans, psychologists looks at the problem from the point of view they think makes the most sense, these points of view, are known as perspectives or approaches. There are many approaches to psychology and many of them are very blinkered and have flaws, despite the fact that they do go some way to explaining behaviour.

Some of the main approaches are mentioned in this following introduction and they are;

• Biological
• Psychodynamic
• Behavioural
• Cognitive, and the
• Humanistic approach

Recently in psychology, the a multi-dimensional approach has become more popular, which intergrates several approaches to give a more rounded explanation of brain and behaviour.

Psychodynamic approach

This approach was really the first approach to explore the complexities of brain and behaviour beyond what could be seen on the outside. It did not assume people were possessed by demons, as had been the case previously, but instead, the psychodynamic approach, which was introduced by Sigmund Freud suggested people behave in the way they do, due to their experiences and unresolved conflicts in childhood.

Freud believed we are driven by unconscious processes that result from experiences in our psychosexual stages of development and have an impact on our ID, EGO and SUPEREGO, which are the dimensions of our personality from his theory of personality.

Freud believed that when people had disorders, they were the result of imbalance in the personality. The results of these imbalances were not something we were aware of, so psychoanalysis was born, where a patient would talk freely and Freud would analyse, other ways to unlock the secrets of the unconscious are through dream therapy, free association and hypnosis.

Behavioural Approach

This approach came after the psychodynamic approach and believed it was only observed behaviour that told us anything about the way people think and act and nothing more

Behaviourist approach was the first in psychology to use animals for experimentation, then generalise findings to humans. Watson was the father of behaviourism in USA and believed all behaviour was merely as a result of stimulus / response, nothing more. People are meant to be born with a blank slate, in other words, nothing there, and their behaviour was only as a result of learning, so it is often referred to as 'learning theory' too, both behaviourism and learning theory mean the same thing.

There are said to be three main ways to learn, they are Classical Conditioning, which was discovered accidently by Pavlov and suggests we learn through association. The second is Operant Conditioning, developed by Skinner, which suggests we learn through reward and punishment.Lastly their is Social Learning Theory (SLT), which suggests we learn through others and are vicariously reinforced by our role models displaying a behaviour and being rewarded for that behaviour, which we then imitate.

The Cognitive approach

Looks at the mental processes of the mind, it is very much like seeing the mind as a computer and looking at behaviour, as a result of that processing. This approach was introduced around the same time as Humanistic, and because it's methods were more scientific, it became popular in the academic world that wanted to promote psychology as a science, but that is a whole debate, that I will not go into here.

The Humanistic approach

Carl Rogers was one of the founding fathers of humanism, that shunned the negative psychodynamic approach and disagreed with the mechanistic view of behaviourists, but instead believed all people were inherently good and all have the answers are in ourselves. Humanism was similar to existenialism, in that it believed people are compelled to progress in a positive manner from the start and there was good in all, they only became negative, as a response to the negativity of others. Gestalt therapy, which is a treatment for disorder in this approach is aimed at improving and building self worth, image and esteem, in other words to correct the balance.

The Biological Approach

Karl Lashley pioneered the biological approach to psychology in the 20th century and believed that all disorders of the mind had a somatic cause. Only toward the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century, has biological psychology become a force to be reckoned with, as it now has the help of advanced technology to monitor the living brain, such as the PET scan shown above of a sagittal section of the brain.

Now instead of having to wait until a patient had died to find out if there were any differences in the diseased person's brain from people with 'normal' brains.

The four main reasons for psychological disorders according to the biological approach, are; genetic, biochemical, neuro-anatomy and micro-organisms. Genetics presumes an inheritance factor, biochemistry, looks at neurotransmitters and hormones. Neuro anatomy takes a look at the structural differences of the brain and micro-organisms is the result of bacteria, viruses and parasites.

In your AS studies you will look at very definitive areas of psychology that will fall under one of the main approaches mentioned above, such as memory, which is cognitive psychology, or individual differences (abnormality), which looks at a variety of approaches, but concentrates quite heavily on the biological approach.