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What is Psychology?

 

    I am not asking what academic psychology is, what is taught at universities, but the question is more anthropological, broader: what is the human psyche? What is psychology in my life? What is my psychological dimension? Most of you have been studying it for years, but even those who approach it for the first time as a college subject have some more or less vague ideas about its scope and content. Its study appeals to you for various personal reasons. Some of you are interested in the application of psychology performed by our society, its individual and social therapeutic dimension. Others are thrown into the arms of psychology by an inner search, the need to better understand the nature of the human soul and the mind. In other terms, some of you choose to study psychology while others are chosen by it. These two paths start from a common source: the need for knowledge of oneself, the motto that could be read at the entrance to the sanctuary of Delphi: Gnosi Seauton, "know yourself". This short and cryptic sentence contains the core of psychology. Through that epistemological action begins the path of psychology, a path of transformation, metamorphosis and evolution of the person. Crossing that threshold we step into the greatest adventure that we can undertake, no doubt about it. Psychology is the inner journey that integrates our entire life, our vision of the world and our relationship with others. I can do little for others if I don't first understand who I am, who is the person in front of me, what is to be a person, what is a Human Being.


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