Normal and Abnormal Psychology Essay

Psychology is a science that studies the human mind and behavior, to understand and explain thoughts, emotions, and behavior of individuals. Psychology can be applied in different ways, such as mental health treatment, performance improvement or enhancement, self-help and other areas impacting the health and daily life of individuals. Psychology is generally a broad field of science, and there are multiple subfields or areas within it. Two subfields in particular that are going to be discussed in this paper are normal and abnormal psychology. An individual is categorized within these two subfields according to whether their social behavior and way of thinking is common or totally out of the norm. Normal Psychology studies the common or average human behavior of individuals. This particular area focuses mainly on understanding the way the individual thinks and reasons throughout their everyday life. This area does not involve any disorders or psychological illnesses, but instead it researches the human mind in trying to better understand the individual’s thought process and behavior. An individual who would be categorized under normal psychology would not display any mental illnesses, disorders, psychological problems or un-normal behavior. Abnormal Psychology studies abnormal human behavior as well as psychopathology of the individual. Abnormal refers to something that is not normal or out of the norm. This particular area of psychology focuses more on research and treatment for the abnormal behavior displayed by the individual. This area of psychology covers a wide variety of disorders such as depression, sexual deviation, obsession-compulsion, anxiety, mood, developmental, etc. A good way to tell if there is a case of abnormal psychology is anytime the behavior of an individual is causing problems in their life or is disruptive to them or other people. There are a number of perspectives used to treat abnormal psychology. Three main perspectives are: behavioral, medical, and cognitive. The behavioral perspective focuses on the observable behaviors. The medical perspective focuses on biological causes on the mental illness. The cognitive perspective focuses on how their internal thoughts and reasoning contribute to the psychological disorders.