At a Glance
William James
William James.
psychology
scientific discipline
psychology, scientific discipline that studies mental states and processes and behaviour in humans and other animals. The discipline of psychology is broadly divisible into two parts: a large profession of practitioners and a smaller but growing science of mind, brain, and social behaviour. The two have distinctive goals, training, and practices, but some psychologists integrate the two. (Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.) In Western culture, contributors to the development of psychology came...