The Study Of Psychology And Psychology - 984 Words

Firstly, it is important to know what is meant by the term â€Å"science†, and then to establish whether psychology adheres to this. The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as â€Å"the study or knowledge of the physical world, based on observation and experiment†. This immediately raises issues about this debate as many areas of psychological research do not involve the observable. For example, the areas of Clinical and Counselling psychology rely on a patient’s thoughts and feelings to help determine whether they suffer from a mental disorder. Owing to an advancement in technology, however, phenomena that was once labelled as unobservable can now be observed. One example of this includes emotions, including happiness, sadness, disgust, fear,†¦show more content†¦This, however, should not be taken at face value as these bodies would not want to portray themselves as being unscientific. Nevertheless, there is an overall positive effect of the psych ological bodies seeing themselves as scientific as empirical research will be promoted further, making psychology as a subject more scientific. Furthermore, psychology has become more scientific by the need to move away from pseudo-scientific perspectives. One such perspective, is Freud’s Psychodynamic approach. This focuses on the subconscious mind, and as this phenomena cannot be observed, it has been argued that the Psychodynamic perspective is unfalsifiable and untestable. Both of these elements are key parts of what makes a science. However, others have argued that the Psychodynamic perspective is testable, but that it has just failed those tests (Hansson, 2015). review The Behavioural perspective was the first to try and move psychology as a subject away from the unscientific by focusing on observable and measurable behaviour to gain empirical evidence. Moreover, since the 1970s, the Biological perspective has grown hugely with neuropsychology now being a dominant approach. This shows that psychology has made a move to become more scientific in its approaches and methods over time. review It has been argued that demarcation should be unchanging throughout time. Dolby stated that if