The basic task of psychology is to reveal people's psychological phenomena, explore the laws of the occurrence and development of psychological activities, and apply these laws to serve human practice. This can be divided into theoretical tasks and practical tasks.

1. Theoretical tasks of psychology

The theoretical task of psychology is to reveal the relationship between psychology, consciousness, the outside world and the brain and the mystery of its origin through the study of its own objects, so as to demonstrate and enrich the basic principles of dialectical materialism with the latest scientific achievements.

The theoretical basis of psychology is dialectical materialism, and the research results of psychology demonstrate and enrich the basic principles of dialectical materialism and make it concrete. Psychology reveals the decisive role of objective reality in people's subjective spirit or psychology, the relationship between psychology and brain, the relationship between psychological development and social and historical conditions, and how people's feelings, perceptions, memories, thoughts and emotions are generated and how to regulate their behavior. The accumulated scientific facts provide favorable scientific evidence for the basic principles of Marxist philosophy on the relationship between matter and spirit, cognition and practice, perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge. As Lenin said: "Some principles provided by psychology make people have to reject subjectivism and accept materialism."

Secondly, the research results of psychology can not only enrich and develop the philosophical principles of dialectical materialism, but also help people to correctly understand their spiritual world, overcome the propaganda of religion, superstition and idealism, and establish a scientific world outlook.

Thirdly, psychological research contributes to the development of adjacent disciplines, such as education, politics, literature, law, aesthetics, sociology and so on. These disciplines also study people from different aspects, and a large number of research results of psychology on human psychology undoubtedly play a positive role in promoting the research and development of these adjacent disciplines.

2. Practical tasks of psychology

The practical task of psychology is to reveal the special laws of psychological phenomena in various practical fields, and to solve specific psychological problems according to the general and special laws of psychological phenomena, so as to serve social practice, which is embodied in two aspects.

First of all, the important role of science lies in prediction and control. Psychology studies the laws of people's psychological activities, and its purpose is to guide people how to know, predict, control and adjust people's psychology in practice. For example, various scales can be compiled according to the psychological performance of intelligence, personality and temperament to understand the level and characteristics of people's psychological development and provide a basis for teachers to teach students in accordance with their aptitude; We can also predict a person's future psychological and behavioral performance from his past and present psychological and behavioral conditions according to the interrelation of various psychological phenomena and behaviors. This will help us to make use of favorable factors, avoid unfavorable factors, better regulate people's psychological activities, and thus improve the efficiency of activities.

Secondly, because all kinds of practical activities of human beings involve psychological problems, how to apply some basic laws revealed by basic psychology to all aspects of practice has become another task of psychology. As a result, there are more and more branches of applied psychology, such as educational psychology, management psychology, medical psychology, literary psychology, military psychology, sports psychology and judicial psychology. And the scientific knowledge of psychology has penetrated into all practical fields, which has produced a wide range of practical values, thus forming a large number of psychology. (3) the research field of psychology branch.

An obvious sign of the development of psychology is the emergence and maturity of branches, which have made their own contributions to the above two tasks. The following are some major branches.

General psychology is a special field, which is in the position of basic discipline in psychology. General psychology is based on the research results of various aspects of psychology, clarifying the most basic facts and general problems in psychological phenomena and exploring the universal laws of psychological activities. Because of its integrity and generality, it has become the foundation of various branches of psychology and the introductory guide for beginners. General psychology can be subdivided into sensory psychology, memory psychology, thinking psychology, emotional psychology, personality psychology and so on.

Developmental psychology mainly includes comparative psychology and individual development psychology. The former is a discipline that studies the facts and laws of psychological development of species in the process of evolution. The latter is a subject that studies the occurrence and development of children's psychology from birth to adulthood and its psychological characteristics at all ages. Individual development psychology mainly includes child psychology, adolescent psychology (adult psychology) and so on.

Educational psychology is a discipline that studies various psychological phenomena involved in the process of education and reveals the relationship between education and psychological development. It not only expounds the essence, process and universal laws of human learning in theory, but also explores the laws of students' mastering knowledge, developing intelligence and forming personality, as well as the methods and qualities of educators to organize teaching and education activities reasonably according to these laws. Educational psychology can also be subdivided into discipline psychology, teacher psychology, teaching psychology and moral psychology.

Social psychology is a subject that studies all kinds of social psychological phenomena that appear in the interaction between individuals and groups, and their laws of emergence and change. Social psychology not only studies psychological phenomena in large groups, such as social emotions, national psychology and religious psychology. We should also study the psychology of small groups, such as group atmosphere, psychological fit and group value orientation. At the same time, it also studies individual social and psychological problems, self-evaluation and self-esteem. Social psychology can be subdivided into mass psychology, group psychology and interpersonal psychology.

There are many branches of psychology, such as management psychology, literature psychology, judicial psychology, medical psychology, abnormal psychology, sports psychology, criminal psychology and so on. I won't introduce it here (see the reading materials in this chapter). It can be seen that the emergence and rapid development of psychological branches,

It not only embodies human needs and its practical value, but also shows that psychology itself has strong vitality and is becoming a leafy tree.

And this:

* Two *

The task of psychology (another way of saying the first task, you combine it)

First of all, the task of psychology

(A) describe the psychological facts

Describing psychological facts is the first step in scientific research on psychological phenomena. Its main task is to scientifically define various psychological phenomena from the perspective of scientific psychology, so as to establish and develop a complete and scientific concept system of psychological phenomena in psychology. This involves the determination of the whole psychological phenomenon and the conceptual connotation and extension of a specific psychological phenomenon. For example, from a big perspective, what is the connotation of "psychology"? What are the psychological phenomena? How to classify them? From specific aspects, such as what is the connotation of "emotion"? What are the types of emotions? How to classify them? Wait a minute. We say that psychology is a developing science, and it is not yet fully mature. A very important fact is that up to now, psychology has not completely established a complete, rigorous and unified concept system, and many of them are still under debate and discussion. For example, there are dozens of concepts about "intelligence". Whether intelligence test measures all human intelligence phenomena, whether the concept of "emotional intelligence" is scientific, and what kind of intelligence phenomena it involves are also controversial issues. The maturity of a science depends largely on the integrity of its conceptual system and scientific level. From this point of view, there is still a long exploration process in describing psychological facts to establish a mature psychological science.

(B) reveal the psychological laws

Scientific psychology should not be limited to describing psychological facts, but should transition from describing phenomena to explaining them, that is, revealing the laws that these phenomena follow, which is a deeper and most important step in scientific research on psychological phenomena. It includes two aspects. On the one hand, it studies the occurrence, development, interrelation, characteristics and functions of various psychological phenomena. Taking the phenomenon of intelligence as an example, on the basis of our understanding of the psychological fact of intelligence, we should further clarify: what is the distribution of intelligence in the whole population? What are the main aspects of people's intellectual differences? How does intelligence generally develop in individuals? What is its development curve? What factors affect the development of intelligence? What is the relationship between intelligence and non-intelligence factors? What are the characteristics of children and adolescents' intellectual development? These are tasks with specific regularity that psychology should study. On the other hand, it is to study the mechanism of the occurrence and performance of psychological phenomena. It includes psychological mechanism and physiological mechanism. The former studies the changes of the interrelationships among the components of the psychological structure involving psychological phenomena. The latter studies the relationship and changes of physiological or biochemical components involved behind psychological phenomena. Of course, the discussion of psychological mechanism and psychophysiological mechanism belongs to different levels of psychological research after all and can be carried out asynchronously. For example, in the past, the research on the mechanism of emotional action was mostly carried out at the physiological and biochemical level, and many related theories were put forward, which accumulated a lot of data, but the research on the psychological level was relatively insufficient. With the in-depth development of cognitive psychology in recent years, creating favorable conditions for research from the psychological level is of great significance for understanding and regulating human emotions.

(3) Forecast and control

The description of psychological phenomena and the revelation of psychological laws belong to the category of cognition. We should not only understand the world, but also transform it (including the objective world and the subjective world). Therefore, on the basis of understanding psychological phenomena and laws, we should also apply these cognitive achievements to the practical activities of transforming the world. This requires the application of psychological laws to practice, and this part becomes another necessary part of psychological research tasks. This task boils down to guiding people how to know, predict and adjust people's psychology in practice. This is also an important link in the transformation from psychological theory to practice. For example, according to the performance of various psychological phenomena such as intelligence, creativity, personality, motivation, interest and attitude, various test scales can be formulated to understand the level and characteristics of people's psychological development and provide a basis for teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and matching jobs; We can also predict a person's future psychological and behavioral performance from his past and present psychological and behavioral conditions according to the interrelation of various psychological phenomena and behaviors. According to the mechanism and influencing factors of some psychological phenomena, effective adjustment, including self-adjustment, is carried out in different environments and situations in order to obtain appropriate psychological response and the best personality development. In a word, psychologists can give people all kinds of guidance in these aspects, so that psychological theory can be closer to people's life, work and study reality, thus improving the efficiency of people's practical activities and quality of life.

The above three tasks are interrelated and interlocking. The accurate description of psychological facts is conducive to the in-depth disclosure of psychological laws; The in-depth revelation of psychological laws creates necessary conditions for effective guidance in practical application; The problems found in the process of guiding practical application will promote people to further explore the description and disclosure of psychological facts and laws, so as to promote the research and application of psychology step by step.

Second, the nature of psychology

Because psychological phenomena have special qualitative stipulation, psychology also has corresponding special properties. It is a science between natural science and social science. This is because: from the subject of psychological phenomenon, man is the unity of natural attributes and social attributes; Judging from the organs produced by psychological phenomena, the inherent natural attributes of the human brain have changed and developed under the influence of people's social lifestyle, and its function is also the unity of nature and society; From the content of psychological phenomena, the objective reality reflected by people is the unity of social existence and natural reality; From the form of psychological phenomenon, people's psychological process has human commonness and shows more natural constraints, while people's personality psychology has people's personality (including social historicity, class nature, nationality and so on). ) and show more social constraints, so they also reflect the unity of natural constraints and social constraints; From the essence of psychological phenomenon, human psychology is the product of society and nature. The scientific proposition that "psychology is the reflection of the brain to the objective reality" itself contains the unity of nature and society.

Kaidalov, a scientific taxonomist in the former Soviet Union, believes that psychology occupies a core position in the scientific system of more than 2,500 disciplines. It can be said that the laws of psychological phenomena studied by psychology run through people's life activities, all fields of people's social practice and all aspects of the development of every science. Therefore, Kaidalov and others positioned psychology at the center of the "scientific triangle" they drew. The three vertices of the triangle are natural science, social science and thinking science (including logic and philosophy) (see figure 1- 1). Kaidalov, a scientific taxonomist in the former Soviet Union, believes that psychology occupies a core position in the scientific system of more than 2,500 disciplines. It can be said that the laws of psychological phenomena studied by psychology run through people's life activities, all fields of people's social practice and all aspects of the development of every science. Therefore, Kaidalov and others positioned psychology at the center of the "scientific triangle" they drew. The three vertices of the triangle are natural science, social science and thinking science (including logic and philosophy) (see figure 1- 1).