After a two decade break from class, I found myself brushing shoulders with a much younger generation along educational institutions hallways. Curiosity they say killed a cat, mine drove me back to school. If I couldn't study the same law that ended up imprisoning me, I wanted to study the mind and why people behave they way the do.
I also believed still believe, lol that it might make me a better writer and after a little self evaluation, I took on Psychology.
So. What is Psychology?
In the simplest scientific terminology, it is the study of the mind. But science being science also complicates the meaning further. It is said that science studies only explore observable phenomena and clearly the mind is not one (the mind is not directly observable) so they expanded the definition the study of the mind to the scientific study of mental processes and behaviour.
A quick share; Understanding that mental processes largely contribute to the behaviour while keeping in mind how we at Africa still take mentalhealth lightly and the stigma around it is the most heartbreaking part of my studying.
For those of us who can't settle for science only... Let's dive into a tale from Greek Mythology!
There was this mortal woman named Psyche whose beauty rivalled even that of a goddess namely Aphrodite. The goddess became so jealous of the mortal woman and planned to rid her competition by sending her son Eros to make her fall for the ugliest man alive.
But Eros accidentally prick himself with the arrow and fell heads over heels in love with the mortal. He took her to his palace and showered her with gifts but denied her seeing his face.
A visit from her sisters later was what rouse curiosity in Psyche and she made sure she saw him without his consent. This betrayal would cost her everything as he disappeared and left her vulnerable to a vengeful goddess.
Aphrodite knew that Psyche wanted her son back so she handed the mortal a series of impossible tasks for her to conquer if she wanted to see her love again. The need must've been more powerful than the goddess imagined as she went ahead and tackled them. So Eros was hers again and she was turned into a goddess too.
... the word psychology is said to have been coined before we clearly distinguished the concepts of the soul and the mind.
In Greek, psyche means soul and is often represented as a butterfly. Thomas Bulfinch, an American writer with a thing for mythology, said that Psyche comes to represent the human soul's triumph over the misfortunes it encounters in pursuit of true happiness.
The importance of studying psychology touches on the expansion of understanding a rather delicate topic... the mind.
Our understanding of the mind is limited as thoughts differ from person to person and cannot be measured scientifically. Science is usually blind when it comes to anything that isn't matter or energy.
But even here, we use scientific research through an empirical routine. This is done by observation including experimentation in attempts to acquire more knowledge about every case there is.
And to think that Psychology had to wait until the late 1800s to be accepted as it's own academic discipline. Before then, the intriguing workings of the mind were considered to be under the auspices of Philosophy.
