We Understand Psychologists! Who, Why And Why?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When you query in any search engine "Psychologist in the city of N …", we will receive a huge number of sites, both clinics and private practitioners. But here's the catch, we also get a huge number of incomprehensible, well, or, at least, difficult to distinguish specialties from each other: psychologist, psychotherapist, clinical psychologist, educational psychologist, etc.

Ufff, how can you understand all of them and understand what kind of specialist you need?

Well, I will try with you to understand this huge number of one-root words.

We will begin, of course, with the definition itself, what kind of interesting science is Psychology, which has spawned such a guard of specialists that it confused everyone even more? Although, if between us, then all sciences produce a huge number (understandable only to a narrow circle) specialists and they do not become bad from this. Oh, something I got distracted)))

So, Psychology (from ancient Greek. Ψυχή - "soul"; λόγος - "teaching") is a science (!) That studies the laws of the emergence, development and functioning of the psyche and mental activity of a person and groups of people.

So, I translate: psychology is a descriptive science and it describes the principles of how, why and, most importantly, why our thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions arise, how we are so different, how we are similar, how we develop and how we degrade, what for we are bad and what is good for us, and this list can be continued indefinitely.

For the most part, psychology interests many people, not even specialists. Why? Yes, man is a terribly curious creature! We are constantly asking questions (especially girls), why did they say it, why did he do that, and why did she say it, and whether he is cheating or not and how can you be so hot-tempered / calm. So in ancient times, wise people began to notice that people are different! (What horror …) They behave differently in the same situations, treat the same problems differently, and so on and so forth. And our science began to emerge, Psychology (then still a doctrine). Some time passed and already doctors began to notice that some diseases cannot be cured if a person is not in peace of mind. Well, the truth is, then things started going on, by no means humane methods of healing the soul appeared, that here it was a sin to conceal many lives was crippled by human curiosity and the desire to learn the unknown. In general, we will not go into the history of psychology yet, we are trying to figure out something else here. But as it became clear to us, duty and thorny was the path to the current knowledge. By the way, as a result of this path, psychology has affected a lot of other sciences and absorbed also a myriad of knowledge from them. Therefore, in psychology, fundamental and applied branches are distinguished. We are getting closer and closer to our question about the number of specialties in psychology.

The fundamental part of psychology is general psychology, which should be known to all specialists - psychologists, regardless of prefixes. General psychology provides such knowledge as: cognitive processes (sensations, perceptions, attention, representations, memory, imagination, thinking, speech, emotions, will), mental properties (abilities, motivation, temperament, character) and mental states. As you can see, medical knowledge helps here, and humanitarian ones also participate.

Applied branches of psychology are called, which are of practical importance. For example, educational psychology, developmental psychology, differential psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology, legal psychology, sports psychology and many others. Tadaam, we got there))) Do you understand? It's like in medicine, first we go to a therapist, because we don't always know what is wrong with us, he understands our tangle of complaints and either heals himself, or sends us for examination, or to a narrower specialist. So in psychology, there are also such narrow specialists who, in addition to general knowledge, go deeper into the study of a particular industry, for example, sports psychology or legal psychology, or traffic psychology (I agree, this is surprising)).

There is a basic division in the training of psychologists - this is a humanitarian approach and a medical one. Accordingly, humanities and pedagogical universities graduate psychologists, medical universities graduate clinical psychologists. I draw your attention to the fact that clinical psychologists are not doctors - psychiatrists or doctors - psychotherapists, if they do not have a higher medical education with the appropriate specialization. That being said, Clinical Psychologists do indeed study human anatomy and physiology for a medical understanding of the human psyche. In addition, clinical psychologists have the opportunity to work in medical institutions and be experts, but Attention! they cannot prescribe medicines !!! For this to a psychiatrist …

Psychologists do not work with personality pathology, and, of course, with mental illness, but clinical psychologists work, moreover, this is their main direction. Therefore, if neurosis, depression, addiction (alcoholism, drug addiction, tobacco smoking), God forbid, phobias (fears) - this is to Clinical Psychologists. As you can see, here knowledge is more thorough in pathologies.

Non-clinical psychologists do not deal with the borderline states of a person (on the verge of illness), they work only with healthy people, they will not treat alcoholism, because they cannot. But they are great at

teach to set goals, understand emotions and give a bunch of tools, armed with which you can resist our World. They help you find yourself, deal with your feelings, find a way out in a specific situation and generally understand what place you occupy in this life. To be honest, clinical psychologists can do this too, if, of course, they are interested.

You can also ask about psychoanalysts, Gestalt therapists, etc. - these are psychologists who immediately tell you what teachings and methods in their work they adhere to, I must say there are a lot of them, here you can read it yourself and intuitively understand what is closer to you.

First of all, I want to say that there is no good or bad specialty, they all developed for a very long time and each passed a cruel path and goes even further.

As S. L. Rubinstein "Psychology is both a very old and still very young science - it has a 1000-year-old past behind it, and, nevertheless, it is still in the future."

Therefore, there are a huge number of specialties and they are all very important and help millions of people to cope with their difficulties, and sometimes real illnesses. Let's appreciate them for this and respectfully treat the enormous work that a psychologist goes through, regardless of his "narrowness" in the process of learning and further work on himself.

To understand which specialist you should contact - read the services. Usually the psychologist writes everything there, in case of emergency you can call and ask. I wish everyone not to get sick and enjoy life (oh, I completely leave myself without work).