ABSTRACT
Psychology is often described as the study of mental processes, or the mind, and behaviour. Indeed many general texts in psychology are often deliberately sub-titled in such a manner as to highlight the full scope of the discipline. Mental processes, however, are less readily observable than openly available behaviour. Mental processes are private events. Although, we usually avoid the use of terms such as ‘events’ when talking about activities that go on in our heads. At the biological level, these might be termed ‘physiological processes’. At
the level of private awareness, these might be termed ‘experiences’. Public events are things that happen within the physical world, but which can be observed by others. The activities of the mind, however, are private. As such, they can only be examined by the person experiencing these activities. Of course, they can be reported to another person, but these introspective reports are not always reliable or accurate. (For instance, refer to the example concerning hypnosis in Chapter Two.)
Private experience and public behaviour
When reading this psychology text you privately experience a number of different things. These might include impatience, ‘why doesn’t this writer just get to the point?’; confusion, ‘what is written here seems to be contradicted by the previous sentence’; annoyance, ‘what I’m reading now seems quite irrelevant to assisting me in passing my examination’; or perhaps enlightenment, ‘Yes. Now I see what this is leading to.’
