Analytical Summary of "Introduction to Psychology"

Robert S. Feldman is the author of coursebook "Understanding Psychology". In the first chapter called "Introduction to Psychology" the author explains what is the psychology, what fields does it contain, what are roots of this science and what are psychology's key issues and controversies.

In the first module "Psychologists at Work" Feldman maintains that "psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, encompassing not just what people do but their biological activities, feelings, perceptions, memory, reasoning and thoughts". It contains many subfields such as clinical, experimental, social, cognitive psychology, etc. According to the field psychologists have chosen they can work in different areas like schools, hospitals or counseling centres.

The second module "A Science Evolves: the Past, the Present and the Future" is about the evolution of psychology science. Despite the fact that people were already thinking about psychological problems many years ago, officially the history of psychology starts when Wilhel Wundt sets up the first psychology laboratory. In our days psychologists not only experiment, but try to help people when they have different kinds of problems in their lives.

In the third module Robert S. Feldman names psychology's key issues and controversies. There are questions how much of our behavoir is due to heredity and nature, how much it is a matter of free will, etc. Unquestionably, it is very important to understand that psychologist can not think about the only one field or issue. Psychology "is a unified science" which is always in progress. The author claims that "Psychology will become increasingly specialized and will pay increasing attention to prevention instead of just treatment".

To sum up, psychology is a science which keeps progressing, conatins many subfields and studies a lot of questions connected with human's thoughts, feelings and behavior.