The Development of Psychology as a Science

It is my view that science has provided an opportunity to discover and delve into the nature of humanity and the daily interactions that occur every day among people. The development of psychology as a science had been pivotal in allowing modern society to know about the trends in attitude and behavior among humans. More specifically, it is through the area of counseling that I am able to apply the precision and deterministic nature of psychological science and human-centric quality of social communication and interaction. Through counseling, I was able to fuse my interest in social interaction and the human mind and knowledge in the science of psychology. Evidently, my philosophy in life is that there are multiple perspectives in understanding the nature of the individual, and among these perspectives are the scientific and humanistic approaches to human understanding.

Indeed, this has been the prevalent thought in counseling. Counseling theories have been formulated through scientific methods and analysis, but they were conceptualized and operationalized according to the principles of human interaction and behavior. My philosophy in life as a student and aspiring counselor, in fact, was derived from the basic foundations of counseling, which seeks to keep a balance between the objective and subjective characteristics of human life. Counseling theories, which were also based on psychological theories, were utilized in order to provide a “norm” or guideline through which human behavior is analyzed. However, more than anything else, these theories also serve as guiding posts to the process of discovery, wherein new ideas and concepts concerning counseling are further developed to add to the growing literature on counseling as a science and process of human interaction analysis.

Erik Erikson’s theory of socioemotional development is an example of a counseling theory that seeks to objectively identify the subjective nature of human behavior by identifying an individual’s socio-emotional development through different stages.