Physiological psychology is sometimes related to psychiatry, and in fact may end up becoming the parent branch which contains psychiatry. This term is not universally accepted as being official jargon, but the concept behind it is rather clear and it does unify several previously similar areas of research. Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that diagnoses, treats, and studies mental illness and behavioral conditions. ...
As background, psychiatrists are the only doctors of psychology who must have completed medical training (at least in the United States). They are certified as are other medical doctors, and they are able to write prescriptions (subject to standard DEA regulations and limitations). Psychiatrists rarely tend to handle the psychological disorders that are perceived as being caused by physical irregularities; as an example, bipolar disorder is caused by abnormal concentrations of neurotransmitters and is therefore often treated with antidepressant medications that moderate the production or removal of neurotransmitters. Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behaviour, mind and thought and the underlying neurological bases of behaviour. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
At the risk of being overly broad in defining it as such, physiological psychology refers to the study of how physical conditions of the human body affect an individual's subjective experience. If a study were to be conducted to find out which region of the brain is active when a person is exercising free will, then this would be on the shared border of cognitive and physiological psychology. Investigating which chemicals are released in which location when a person feels "love" or "anger" would also fall under the umbrella of physiological psychology. These three examples were chosen in part because such research has already been done. Neurobiology and neurology also possess a portion of research and applied methods which could be classified as physiological psychology. Neuroscience is a field of study which deals with the structure, function, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology and pathology of the nervous system. ... Neurology is the branch of medicine dealing with the nervous system and its disorders. ...
In his preface to the first edition of his Principles o f PhysiologicalPsychology, dated 1874, he begins with the impressive statement that the work 'was presented in order to "mark out a new domain of science."1 He states flatly that, as a science, psychology cannot be based upon any metaphysical assumptions whatsoever.
Despite Wundt's calling the new science, physiologicalpsychology, heinsisted the psychic and the physiological process are separate andparallel.2 As causality in natural science is a closed system,3 the phenomena that are studied by natural science cannot affect the mind or beaffected by it.
Folk psychology is differentiated from ethnology by Wundt because the latter is concerned primarily with the external cultures and only in a very incidental fashion with the psychological characteristics that are at the core of folk psychology.
Experimental psychology is an approach to psychology that treats it as one of the natural sciences, and therefore assumes that it is susceptible to the experimental method.
It is usually taken to include the study of perception, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, the experimental analysis of behavior, and some aspects of physiologicalpsychology and developmental psychology.
With the expansion of psychology as a discipline in the later half of the twentieth century, and the growth in the size and number of its subfields, the phrase "experimental psychology" has come to cover too broad an area to be much used.