Portal:Psychology

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The Psychology Portal

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Psychology (Greek: ψυχολογία) is the academic and applied study of behavior, mind, and their underlying mechanisms. It primarily applies to humans but can also be applied to non-humans such as animals or artificial systems. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of activity, including problems of human beings' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. The field contains a range of sub-areas (for instance, the studies of development, personality, and language), as well as many different theoretical orientations (such as behaviorism, evolutionary psychology, and psychoanalysis). Psychology draws from a number of other fields of study, including biology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy.

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This image illustrates how an autostereogram is perceived by a viewer
An autostereogram is a single-image stereogram (SIS), designed to create the visual illusion of a three-dimensional (3D) scene from a two-dimensional image in the human brain. In order to perceive 3D shapes in these autostereograms, the brain must overcome the normally automatic coordination between focusing and vergence. Autostereograms are similar to normal stereograms except they are viewed without a stereoscope. A stereoscope presents 2D images of the same object from slightly different angles to the left eye and the right eye, allowing the brain to reconstruct the original object via binocular disparity. With an autostereogram, the brain receives repeating 2D patterns from both eyes, but fails to correctly match them. It pairs two adjacent patterns into a virtual object based on wrong parallax angles, thus placing the virtual object at a depth different from that of the autostereogram image.

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Freud's couch used during psychoanalytic sessions
Credit: Konstantin Binder

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. His therapeutic technique frequently involved talking with his patients while they reclined on his famous couch.

Quotes

  • "There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much." — Noam Chomsky
  • "Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality." — Jean Piaget

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William James
William James (January 11, 1842, New York – August 26, 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism.

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