A FEW THINGS THAT MOTIVATED ME TO STUDY THE DISCIPLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY

A FEW THINGS THAT MOTIVATED ME TO STUDY THE DISCIPLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY

Please note: At the time of writing this blog, the blogger is supposed to be writing on Dehumanization. The research bored me so here is a frustrated writers blog…

This particular blog will be quite interesting because over my five years of teaching general psychology among a few other courses; the question always arises from one of the students. “Dr. Murray, what motivated you to study psychology?” Since I never gave those precious students an in-depth and precise answer, I thought I would blow-off some time and blog my answer. As I ponder the question, it would be a great question for someone who is seriously considering Psychology; whether clinical psychology, counseling psychology, educational psychology, industrial/ organizational psychology; there are others.

For those of you who would like to study or major in psychology, I thought I would post some things that may be helpful. I’m quite sure if other psychology professors compiled a list it would read differently. Of course every individual must make up his or her own choice when it comes to specializing in areas of pedagogy. However, the main reason why I wanted to study psychology was due to the notion of Sensation & Perception- the basic definition of Sensation is the detection of physical energy emitted or reflected by physical objects whereas Perception is the process by which the brain organizes and interprets sensory information. It has always been interesting how we as humans interpret the environmental and socio-cultural cues that are given within society. Plus how we detect and receive physical stimuli is equally fascinating. For example, •Specific nerve energies -Different sensory modalities exist because signals received by the sense organs stimulate different nerve pathways leading to different areas of the brain. The behavior and mental processes of human beings are predominately attached to sensation and perception and the way that we connect to this physical environment and how we perceive information.

I can just include visual objects and how we perceive them. Typically called •Visual constancies - The accurate perception of objects as stable or unchanged despite changes in the sensory patterns they produce:
Shape constancy
Location constancy
Size constancy
Brightness constancy
Color constancy
This all matters when we are considering depth and distance. I know what you’re thinking, why share stuff like this? Well the fact of the matter is my interest in psychology is loaded with several interesting functions of human behavior. The other area that motivated my love for the discipline of Psychology is the whole conversation around mental disorders. Briefly, a working definition for a mental disorder is: Any behavior or emotional state that causes a person to suffer, is self-destructive; seriously impairs the person’s ability to work or get along with others; or endangers others or the community. Most people sometimes will manifest symptoms of several disorders; no need to get nervous, especially if you are not endangering yourself or community. Now if there are behaviors that are beginning to hinder the regular ebb and flow of what was before normal functioning then there may be a need to inquire. I was also drawn to psychology because of the intrigue of diagnosis and the validity of the classification system. I was always concerned about diagnosing an individual with the wrong diagnosis; those labels tend to follow one for life; so when I studied psychology, I was concerned about the validity of the diagnostic system and I have identified at least 4 concerns with diagnosing without competency

1. The danger of over-diagnosis

2. The power of diagnostic labels

3. Confusion of serious mental disorders with normal problems

4. The illusion of objectivity and universality

Ok this is enough—I have much more on this issue but I just wanted to throw some concrete answers out as to what motivated me to study psychology. I’ll post some other Psychology stuff later but this allowed me to answer another question-------

Until the next Blog---Lawrence Murray Ph.D.