Lesson 1: What Is Psychology, Really?
Transcript
Welcome to The Introduction to Psychology Series. I’m RJ Starr.
Before we talk about what psychology is, let’s talk about what it isn’t.
Psychology isn’t just therapy. It’s not just about mental illness. And it’s definitely not just a collection of quirky facts about human behavior, like why we yawn when we see someone else yawn, or why we remember emotionally charged events more clearly. Those things are interesting, yes—but they’re not the heart of the field.
Psychology, at its core, is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Which means it’s about everything people do—and everything happening internally while they’re doing it. That includes thoughts, feelings, memory, decisions, attention, motivation, relationships, fear, learning, perception, even the ways we try to not feel what we’re feeling. It’s one of the only fields that lets you study the full range of human life—from neurons to neighborhoods, from biology to belief systems.
And because it deals with humans, psychology is everywhere. It shows up in your conversations, your habits, your parenting, your leadership, your reactions in traffic, your friendships, your childhood, your future goals. This isn’t something that only exists in a textbook or in a lab. You’re already living it. This course just gives you the words, the structure, and the insight to begin understanding what’s actually going on.
So where did all of this start?
Psychology has philosophical roots. Thousands of years ago, long before we had the language of neuroscience or the tools of data analysis, people were already asking the big questions. What makes us who we are? Do we have free will? Why do people make irrational decisions? What’s the connection between the mind and the body?
For a long time, these questions belonged to philosophy and religion. They were important—but they weren’t tested. That changed in the late 1800s when a group of early thinkers decided to take the questions of the mind and start treating them as science. Wilhelm Wundt, for example, set up what’s considered the first psychology lab in Germany in 1879. He tried to study consciousness through careful observation and introspection—asking people to describe their thoughts and sensations in real time. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.
In the U.S., William James helped build a version of psychology that focused more on function—what mental processes do, and how they help people survive and adapt. Then came Freud, who wasn’t running labs but was building something equally influential: a theory of the unconscious mind. Freud believed that a lot of what we think and feel is actually shaped by forces outside our awareness—childhood experiences, unprocessed emotions, social taboos, internal conflicts.
Even though many of Freud’s ideas have been criticized or updated since, his influence on the field was huge. He made the internal world feel important—and not just for academic theory, but for real people trying to understand their pain, their patterns, and their desires.
From there, psychology branched into many directions. Behaviorists like John Watson and B.F. Skinner focused on what could be observed and measured—things like learning, conditioning, reward, and punishment. Humanists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow pushed back, arguing that psychology should also honor free will, personal growth, meaning, and emotion. In the second half of the twentieth century, cognitive psychology emerged, bringing focus back to thoughts, memory, problem solving, and information processing.
Today, psychology is both unified and diverse. It’s unified by its commitment to evidence and insight—but diverse in the approaches it includes. Clinical psychology, social psychology, biological psychology, developmental, industrial-organizational, cultural, forensic, and more. It doesn’t matter what corner of life you’re looking at—if humans are involved, psychology has something to say.
And so do you. Even if you’ve never taken a course before, you’re already a kind of psychologist. You make observations. You form theories. You test your ideas. You notice patterns. You respond to emotions—yours and other people’s. You’ve already asked yourself questions like: Why do I react like this? Why does this situation keep repeating? Why can’t I let that go?
That’s psychology.
Now, let’s be clear: not everything you see online under the label of psychology is actually grounded in the field. You’ve probably noticed the rise of therapy-speak and diagnostic language in everyday conversation. Attachment styles, narcissism, trauma responses, emotional regulation. It’s become common to scroll your feed and hear people talk about boundaries, gaslighting, inner child work, avoidant behavior. Some of this content is helpful. A lot of it is shallow, oversimplified, or even misused.
Psychology isn’t a series of personality labels. It isn’t a TikTok diagnosis. It’s a process. A practice. A rigorous, evolving way of seeing. It requires nuance. It holds tension. It honors complexity. And it rarely gives you quick answers.
That might be disappointing if you came here hoping for hacks and takeaways. But here’s the truth: there’s something better than a hack. There’s insight. And insight lasts.
Psychology doesn’t try to tell you who you are. It invites you to understand how you became who you are. And it gives you tools to explore whether those patterns are still serving you—or whether they need to be reworked.
That’s what this series is about. It’s not a college-level survey course. You won’t hear every subfield. You won’t get tested. But you will get a human-centered introduction to the foundational ideas in psychology—told through the lens of real life. Each lesson will explore one major area. The brain and body. Memory. Learning. Emotion. Motivation. Development. Personality. Mental health. And in each one, I’ll try to connect the theory to the things you’ve lived—so it’s not abstract. So it stays grounded.
The ultimate purpose of psychology is fourfold. One: to describe behavior. Two: to explain it. Three: to predict it. And four: to help influence it, when change is needed.
That last part is what draws most people in. The desire to grow. The hope of healing. The need to understand why something feels stuck. But you can’t influence what you don’t understand. And you can’t understand what you haven’t examined.
So we start here. With awareness.
Psychology gives us a language for internal life. It lets us talk about things we’ve felt but couldn’t name. It gives shape to invisible experiences—emotional flashbacks, mental loops, belief systems, avoidance patterns. It helps you see what’s actually happening underneath the surface so that your choices become more intentional and less reactive.
And it’s not just about you. It also helps you understand other people—with less judgment, more clarity, and more compassion. Because once you see how many forces are shaping someone’s behavior—biological, emotional, social, historical—you stop assuming it’s all about willpower or character. You realize that people are not always choosing their behavior from a clean slate. They’re choosing within a system. Within a context. Within a history.
And so are you.
So where do we go from here?
Over the next nine lessons, we’ll walk through the parts of psychology that are most foundational for understanding yourself and the people around you. We’ll talk about how the brain creates experience. How we learn—intentionally and unintentionally. How memory works—and why it sometimes betrays us. What drives our behavior, and why motivation isn’t just about goals. How we experience emotions. How we change over time. What makes up a personality. And how the field understands psychological distress and healing.
This is not a self-help series, though you might find help here. This is not a therapy replacement, though you might hear things that shift how you think and feel. This is a foundation. A starting point. Something to come back to when you’re trying to make sense of people—including yourself.
And if there’s one thing I hope you carry through this entire series, it’s this: clarity isn’t the opposite of mystery. It’s the doorway to it. The better we understand ourselves, the more generous we can become with others. And the more grounded we are, the more possible it becomes to change—not just in theory, but in practice.
Thanks for listening. In Lesson Two, we’ll explore the origins of psychology as a science—and how its earliest thinkers shaped the way we still understand behavior today.