1 SUBJECT AND TASKS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology (Greek: psyche - “soul”, “butterfly”) is not only a teaching about the soul, as it was believed before. At present, psychology has become a full-fledged science that studies the processes of the emergence and development of the human psyche and animals. The very first mentions of psychological science appeared more than 2000 years ago, when Aristotle wrote his Treatise on the Soul. But at that time psychology was not considered a separate science, it was only a section of philosophy.

The term "scientific psychology" was first used in the XVII century. Christian Wolff, who researched personality. As an independent science, psychology was declared only in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was preceded by a long way of its development and formation.

Aristotle in The Treatise on the Soul regarded psychology as a science of the soul. Everything that could not be understood was explained by the fact that man has a soul.

In the XVII century. The rapid development of natural science. In this connection, a new branch of psychological study has emerged - human consciousness. Of particular importance was the method of interiorization: the man himself watched his behavior and tried to describe the most significant moments.

At the beginning of the XX century. Behavioral psychology of J. Watson appeared, through which a person’s behavior, his reactions to various external stimuli were considered.

The subject of modern psychology is the general laws of the human psyche and animals. At this stage, psychology began to study the inner mental world of man, conscious and unconscious of them.

From this we can conclude that the subject of psychology changed at each stage of its study. As psychology becomes a separate science, it can be seen that the researchers came to the subject of "psyche" from the original subject "soul". All this took place against the background of the emergence and development of various psychological trends, such as: behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, etc.

According to the German psychologist of the late XIX - early XX centuries. Hermann Ebbinghaus, psychology has a great background and a short history.

Subject of scientific psychology:

1) the psyche of a healthy person in physical and psychological terms;

2) individual facts of the mental side of human life, described qualitatively and quantitatively;

3) psychological laws that describe and explain the phenomena of human life;

4) the mechanism by which a person creates a subjective image of the objective world.

Tasks of psychology:

1) the study of the laws of the psyche and its activities;

2) study of the development of the psyche at different stages of human life (mental processes and conditions, varying in complexity);

3) the disclosure of human properties from the standpoint of social and biological.