Who is a psychologist and what do they do? A psychologist is a professional in psychology, i.e. the science dealing with psychic activities and mental phenomena of humans (e.g. abilities, skills, attitudes) and with the structure and development of a personality (e.g. temperament, emotions, motivation, character) in relation to the person’s environment. A psychologist may work in industry, business, education, health care, in the sphere of social-psychological and educational advisory work, in job centres, in the judicial system, the arts, research, etc.
What are the activities of the psychologist job? These include:
– psychological assessment or psychometrics, i.e. activities focused on finding out personality characteristics of an individual (interests, attitudes, abilities); this is done by psychological tests and other standardised psychological processes and methods
– advisory and consultancy work, i.e. activities that are based on the analysis of the necessary information about the client, making recommendations to the client concerning his/her decision-making in a given situation (e.g. disagreements in marriage, problems in bringing up children, looking for a suitable career, field of study or course, selection and placement of workers, methods to motivate workers, ways to increase work results, etc.)
– psychotherapeutic work, i.e. individual work with the client (psychoanalysis, hypnosis, and a variety of other individual therapies) or different kinds of group work (group psychotherapy, psycho-drama, music therapy, art therapy, etc.)