1. Chapter 1 Dimensions of Psychology
Definition:
- “It is the study of behavior and mental processes”
Main goals:
1- Describe behavior and mental processes.
2- Explain behavior and mental processes.
3- Predict the mental characteristics in specific circumstances.

2. * Importance of studying this course?
1. Helps the student to understand their own behavior and others’ behavior, and reasons for that behavior.
2. Helps the students to develop insights, and suggests how applied in the problem solving (personal and social)
3. Helps you in your future work as dealing with different types of patients.
 4. Helps you to be more perceptive in evaluating psychological information’s, you read or hear about.
5- Assess and relieve stress in the different clinical situations.

3. *Aspects of psychology:
I -Psychology is a science
-May not seem to you as much of a science like chemistry or biology. ( psychologists study things that can’t be put in a tube or under a microscope).
-Psychologists try to understand behaviors, and relations between variables and issues (deal with sensations or perception).

4. *Examples: -
-Why twins develop different personalities?
-Why women are more emotionally? expressive than men are?
Psychology: deals with (why and how).
Psychologists use systematic method to gather data, analyze them and interpret the meaning of their findings and developing theories.

5. A theory: (attempt to fit all known, relevant facts into a logical explanation).
can serve as framework for collecting more data.
Findings of different investigators lead to new problems, new directions and new possibilities, (so there is always more to learn. (

6. II –Psychology promote human welfare: by:
- a) Basic science aims to understand a subject regardless to whether will have immediate practical effect e.g. emotions, attitudes, motivations, and thoughts.
-Some people thinks that basic science is a wasting of time and money.

7. b) Applied science: the research findings are used to solve practical problems or improve the quality of life e.g. poor academic achievement of students, decrease productivity of the workers.

8. Past history of Psychology:
Wilhelm Wundt ( )
German -professor participated in establishing psychology as a separate science.,
Built the first psychology laboratory in 1879 for the purpose of doing psychological research

9. William James ( ) :
- American psychologist published the most influential text book in psychology "principles of psychology", he believed that human mind was constantly evolving as it adapted to new information of the environment.
 N.B.: "Al- Ghazaly“ is the first Islamic scientist who named this science as psychology.

10. Questions?