What is Psychology?

" Civilization is a particular process that proceeds below humanity."
S. Freud

We have studied the human being, we followed his evolution, we believed for a long time that it all came down to the physical and tangible. Until the day Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst, took the risk of going further, well beyond the physical, to delve into what he called the "psyche", which bears our troubles' concealed reasons.

It all started with psychology. This word is now widespread and simply means the study (logos) of the soul (psyche). In the past, we used to say that psychology is the science of psychic facts, just as physics is that of nature's facts. This kind of consideration is outdated today and is but a mere historic anecdote.
We understood more or less that the psychic is a complex whole, a combination of physical-chemical, physiological and social elements. We learned that there is not one psychology but several.

This multiplicity is not contradictory: whether we study behavior, attitude, conscience, structures of mental life or subconscious, all these researches converge towards knowledge of man as a concrete reality; this knowledge, along with linguistics, sociology and other derivative sciences, contribute in building an anthropology which will be our century's science, just as history was that of the 19th century and physics that of the 17th and 18th.

For the sake of more precision, and to give a clear idea of terms already used and those we might come across, we need to define them.

Psychology is a discipline that is interested in the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. The word psychology is most often represented by the following logo: ?, which is the 23rd letter of Greek alphabet ("psi").

A psychologist is any person who has studied psychology. The only therapeutic method he/she can use is that which is called "face to face", representing verbal communication with the patient. On the other hand, psychologists are professionals of mental health, who are trained in psychology or psychiatry, and have specialized in the field of psychoanalytical therapies.

This involves the patient lying down on a couch, and with the help of the psychoanalyst, he/she tries to locate the cause of his torments in his memories. A psychiatrist however, is a professional of mental health, trained in medicine, and specialized in the domain of diagnosis and treatment of mental troubles. She/he is the only one authorized to prescribe medicine as treatment.

Following this brief presentation of psychology under its various aspects, would it still be permissible to evade a therapy that can only relieve us by bringing out our repressed desires one by one? We have always feared science at its beginnings, but once we have given it the opportunity to express itself, then we can't let go of it!

Réva Berbari