When you think of psychology you might think of Freud or you might think of researchers watching rats running through mazes. Or you might think of a psychologist sitting behind a desk helping someone with his problems. But would you think of someone taking pictures of someone else's brain with special machines? Would you picture a psychologist studying the way the chemicals in the brain (called neurotransmitters) were working to cause mental illness? Psychologists do all of these things.

Psychology is often defined as the systematic study of behaviour and the way the mind works. This definition, if you think about it, includes all of the things described above. Psychologists study how the mind works, including everything from emotions to the physical structure of the brain. Most people who are psychologists work as clinical psychologists. They work in such places as clinics, schools, and industry. Their main role is to treat patients who are having problems. The next largest group of psychologists are involved in research. They are called experimental psychologists and their work is usually in a lab working on gathering evidence for theories. Other major fields of psychology are industrial/organizational psychology, educational psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and health psychology.

One interesting field of psychology is biopsychology. There are many fascinating issues that biopsychologists are dealing with today. For example, the question of localization of function asks whether each physical part of the brain is responsible for performing a specific job, or if the brain works as a whole using all of its parts to do every job. Along those same lines, there is the question of the mind-body problem. Many psychologists are asking how mental and physical events interact. For example, when you look at a painting, how do the structures in the brain that are telling you what you see interact with your emotions that are telling you what you feel about that painting -- do you like it, and do you think the colours are bright, or dull, and do you like the shapes and the lines?

Many biopsychologists are specially trained in areas that deal with the study of the brain itself. They use tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to take still pictures of the brain, and positron emission tomography (PET) to show pictures of the brain while it is at work.

Psychology is divided up into different areas that psychologists often call perspectives. The number and names of these perspectives differ depending on who you ask, but there are certain major ones that stand out. For example, there are behavioural psychologists who think that behaviour is learned. They think that human and animal minds work like machines which, given a certain input, give a certain output. There are also cognitive psychologists who think that behaviour is a result of information processing, like that of a computer. The brain is the structure of the computer and the mind runs software in the brain. There are psychodynamic psychologists who believe that behaviour is the result of unconscious processes. Their beliefs are often based on the work of the famous Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud. Finally, there are evolutionary psychologists who think that the way we think reflects the processes of natural selection.

So, as you can see, there are many different ideas within the field of psychology. There are those psychologists who take a more scientific approach and those who work more like social scientists. There are those who perform experiments and those who work with people to help them with their problems. But they all are working on the same thing essentially -- how and why we behave the way we do. Perhaps by studying all of these different areas, we'll be able to put together the information and understand ourselves better in the future.

Check out this psychology experiment that you can do with your friends.