Kevin J. Bowen
Psychology 101
Today’s Perspective of Psychology
Jimletta Vareene-Thomas
September 18, 2008
Today’s Perspective of Psychology
The purpose of this reflective paper is to demonstrate the understanding of the assignments and discussions, and a gained understanding of the new knowledge received from reading the textbook by Robert Feldman Understanding Psychology: coursework, Psychology 101 at Ashford University.
Previous courses up to this point have provided a general knowledge of Psychology to base the perception that Sigmund Freud happens to be one of the early psychologists of our day. Since then, the learning of other leading psychologist whom have laid the foundations of psychology makes this book so interesting to read and study. What fascinates me the most about this book is that it uses more medical terms than I expected. Beforehand, two books in particular, the Longman Standard History of Philosophy taught me of behavior underlying the way people think about the world and the book, Introducing Communication Theory; perquisite the process of paradigms and having well-grounded theories.
The objective of psychology is plain and simple; to identify, understand, and explain behavior and mental process. Any student wanting to learn theories alone should be warned beforehand that searching this book for the relationship of psychology and theories might fall short of a set of well-grounded theories. Feldman focus is more toward the major people of psychology and more important, the major perspectives of psychology today. Feldman’s approach is to first introduce the student to the field of psychology.
The first focus of this reflective paper deals with the first learning outcome, “to identify and describe the major psychological theories from this course”. Theories are broad explanations and predictions concerning phenomena of interest. Theories provide a framework for understanding the relationships among a set of...