In 1943, Walter Langer and Henry Murray, respectively, provided the U.S. military with an analysis of Hitler’s psychological state and behavior patterns, the Langer Report and the Murray memo. These two reports provided the allied powers with great help and reference when making decisions about when to land in Europe. The content includes Hitler’s personality analysis and prediction of Hitler’s behavior. The reports document Hitler’s secret idiosyncrasies and experiences. For example, he suffered violence and abuse from his father as a child, so psychologists speculate that the allies’ attempt to end the war peacefully was impossible. His penchant for late-night driving and nose surgery confirmed that Hitler suffered from neurasthenia, schizophrenia, syphiliphobia and other psychological disorders. The final prediction is that Hitler will probably hide in an underground bunker and shoot himself. On April 30, 1945, Hitler shot himself in his room in the basement of the Chancellery. When I learned this, I took a great interest in psychology. I think a person can be deeply analyzed through some of his behaviors and details，even being able to predict a person’s behavior, and the reasons behind it, is an interesting and useful “skill.” It will be a great help to my future life, study, social life and work. So when I selected courses in grade 12, I chose psychology without hesitation.
I think learning psychology, taking AP psychology class, has deepened my understanding of myself and the world around me. First of all, by learning psychology, I can better understand the motivation and psychological activities over some behaviors of people, so as to better understand the character of the people. In social communication, I think it is important to make good use of psychological knowledge. When I can gradually understand a person from details, such as his personality, I can manage healthy and comfortable relationships with my friends by changing the way I communicate based on their personality traits. For example, leaders are more likely to argue with perfectionists, but when we understand the personality traits of different personalities, we can change the tone and way of communication according to these personality traits, thus avoiding a lot of quarrels and conflicts. Secondly, learning psychology can also bring a lot of help to my study. For example, if I know the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, the rule of forgetting, and that we are more likely to remember the beginning and end of a list of words, THEN I can adjust my learning style based on what I know about psychology to achieve a better grade. Otherwise, when I did badly in the exams, I sometimes felt desperate and didn’t want to study. While when I knew what learned helplessness was, I would have a deeper understanding of what learned helplessness was, and finally completed my academic self-help.
Studying psychology is actually of great help to my work field. I am a student majoring in animation, which has high requirements on my story writing ability and character design. The character design will inevitably involve the character’s personality and behavior. Then I can’t directly tell the character of the role, but when I set a character, I can express the character of the role through many details and behaviors. If I can make good use of my psychological knowledge, I will surely be able to design a three-dimensional, real, complex and interesting character. Last but not least, I think psychology exists in every crack of our life, even something like lifting our hand, and swiping our credit card to pay. Any ordinary behavior, as well as many majors and jobs are closely related to psychology, so it is particularly important to study psychology. When we can make good use of psychological knowledge, I think it is a great help to improve ourselves and enhance our awareness of the world around us.
After I chose AP psychology, my cognition of psychology deepened again and again. I understand that psychology is not metaphysical, but it is more interesting and fascinating than any magic. Then I realized that so much psychological knowledge is contained in a person’s ordinary behavior. Psychology is science, we need to complete our speculations through professional rigorous experiments. After I learned psychology, I realized that psychology and biology are also closely related. It can be as romantic as literature, and as rigorous as science. In class, Mr. Dyck will patiently explain psychology knowledge to us, which is really one of my favorite courses. The class atmosphere is very good. Sometimes, even if we encounter some difficult knowledge, Mr. Dyck uses some vivid and interesting examples to make us understand the meaning of relevant knowledge quickly. Of course, what impresses me most is at the beginning of the semester, Mr. Dyck firstly let us know a lot of our misunderstandings about psychology and some widely spread psychological rumors. For example, psychology is metaphysics, pseudoscience, fortune-telling, dream interpretation, idealism, the person who studies psychology has psychological disease and so on. In fact, many rumors are quite funny, but there are many people who believe it. I even believed a lot of rumors. So I think it’s really necessary that we understand that psychology is science before we study it. Therefore, I think Mr. Dyck is really a responsible teacher. He is rigorous enough in psychology and patient enough in his treatment of students, but his way of teaching is very interesting and lively. Most importantly, I learned a lot in his class, gradually deepened my understanding of psychology, and became more and more interested in this course. I originally chose psychology because of curiosity, but now I study psychology because of infinite interest and love.
In conclusion, AP psychology is really an interesting course where you can learn a lot. I think if I have the opportunity, I will continue to study psychology as a hobby after graduating from high school. It has helped me a lot in my study and social life. Let me have a deeper understanding of the world and the people around me, deepen my understanding of myself, the cognition of life. It even made me more rigorous and careful. Whether as a professional need or a hobby, AP Psychology is really a good choice.