The 6 main functions of the psychologist (and his role in society)

It is mistakenly thought that the main mission of psychologists is to give answers or advice to people who are in a situation of suffering. However, and insofar as psychology is a science with a great history and development, the functions of the psychologist are as varied as they are important.

Taking this into consideration, we will see below what, exactly, the main functions of the psychologist.

• Related article: "The 12 branches (or fields) of Psychology"

The 6 main functions of the psychologist

The functions of the psychologist depend largely on the subdiscipline or specialized branch of psychology that is applied. These can be, for example, clinical psychology, educational psychology, social psychology or organizational psychology. In turn, these disciplines have been created with one main objective: that of solve problems related to human behavior.

In other words, they have been generated to offer answers to different problems in different environments. Although the theoretical and practical foundations are the same, psychology is not applied in the same way in a clinical setting as in a school or in a company.

1. Provide emotional support

Most of us psychologists are trained to "help others." This demand can be presented and solved in many different ways, because the need for help is not always the same for everyone.

Thus, the psychologist also has the function of detecting which are the most appropriate tools for each case. Some use diagnostic manuals, others use therapies based on different theoretical models, others resort to referral when the case escapes their possibilities of action.

It is even often thought that emotional accompaniment is limited to clinical or diagnostic spaces, this emotional accompaniment not only occurs within the doctor's offices, and it's not exclusive to manuals either. For example, there are group interventions in workshops or therapies of more than one person and even in public spaces.

In any case, the work of the psychologist is to generate an empathetic and responsible space for the suffering of others, so that the construction of tools that mitigate it can be favored.

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2. Understand how we create and are affected by society

This function is more or less recent in the history of psychology, and corresponds to the social specialty of this. It is more recent because psychology arose initially as a way of studying the individual and its mental processes.

But there was a group of intellectuals who realized that this psyche did not exist in isolation, but was influenced by other psyches, or by "society." In fact, sometimes society is thought to be one thing, and individuals are something else entirely. In fact, much of the traditional development of social psychology has been based on this idea.

However, there are also branches of social psychology that consider that society is nothing other than collective activity of individuals, with which, not only "affects us", but at the same time the we produce. This is part of the curiosities that a psychologist may have and try to develop in the form of theories and interventions.

3. Offer strategies for human development

While psychology is offered as a tool to understand the human being, it has also been developed as an objective to favor or encourage that being to develop in positive conditions for itself same.

Thus, one of the most recent functions of the psychologist is not only responsible for understanding and accompanying (or even "curing") discomforts, but also for understand and promote well-being.

For example, a part of humanistic psychology was devoted to studying the conditions that are most favorable for our development, with the aim of providing both individual and social tools to encourage it. And, more recently, we can find the branch of positive psychology, in which the psychologist has precisely the function of understanding and benefiting personal growth.

• Related article: "The 3 pillars of balance in personal growth"

4. Know and promote cognitive development

Another of the most characteristic functions of the psychologist has been to study, describe and understand how intelligence, reasoning, future planning, memory, attention, learning work, among other activities that constitute our cognitive processes.

Through this understanding and the proposals that have been generated in cognitive psychology, the psychologist has gained one more function: to create the necessary strategies to favor said processes.

This can be applied in different settings, for example in schools to promote children's learning, or in clinical therapy to modify thought patterns that cause suffering.

In fact, the word psychology means "study of the psyche", and "psyche" is a term that refers to the processes of the human mind. The latter can be studied independently of behavior, or in relation to it, as would be the case with a cognitive-behavioral psychologist.

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5. Advise recruitment and personnel management processes

During its development, psychology has had to adapt to different social and individual needs. At the present time of our civilization, industrial or organizational relations are fundamental to our daily lives.

In this context, a psychologist (who would be, for example, an organizational psychologist), has the main function of knowing and advising a specific business context. The latter includes, from understanding which are the professional profiles that best suit that context, to favoring the labor relations that are established there.

6. Develop knowledge about the relationship between biology and behavior

One of the main tasks of a psychologist has always been to know the relationship between behavior and our biological makeup. That is, knowing how our actions and even our feelings they connect with our physiology or with the activity of our brain.

Thus, recently even specialties in training and research in psychology have emerged (which in turn have provided tools for the clinic and to promote cognition), known as behavioral physiology, or neuropsychology.

The psychologist specializing in these areas can have important functions when diagnosing, studying and treating, for example, Alzheimer's, some types of depression and anxiety, aphasias, among other diversities of neurodevelopment.