Psychology is a popular elective course. Many students are curious about the way our minds work. We often try to “psychoanalyze” each other by looking at our behavior and coming up with armchair diagnoses of our teachers and fellow students. However, psychology is a broad field with many sub-fields, including clinical, cognitive and developmental psychology. Get top marks on your APA 7 style psychology paper by following these tips.
Selecting Your Topic
Depending on your psychology assignment guidelines, you may be asked to explore or compare and contrast topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation, the effects of prejudice and discrimination, or any number of topics relating to social relations. Check with your instructor for further guidelines.
APA Citation Style
As you prepare your psychology paper, you should use the APA 7 citation style guide. Your teacher may ask for a different style, such as MLA, but the American Psychological Association (APA) specifically developed this style to reflect the research, writing and citation methods used in the field of psychology.
History of Psychology
One of the first things you will study is the history of psychology, learning about the brains behind the development of this field of study. For the purposes of this article, we will narrow our focus down to the development of therapy.
Although most people are familiar with the name Sigmund Freud, he was not the first to develop psychological theory. Freud changed the nature of the field, but even in Ancient Greece, there was interest in human behavior. In the 1700s, philosopher Rene Descartes developed the theory of dualism.
Search for Reliable Sources
As Sigmund Freud is well-known for his work in the field of human behavior, this search will focus on Freud’s work and theories on the development of psychoanalysis, a sub-field of psychology.
General Websites About Psychoanalysis
Although websites such as Wikipedia are not authoritative, they can be a good starting point for your research. For example, this Wikipedia article is extensive, with references to authoritative and primary sources.
- The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, (editor and translator Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson), 1985, ISBN 978-0-674-15420-9
- The Sigmund Freud Carl Gustav Jung Letters, Publisher: Princeton University Press; Abr edition, 1994, ISBN 978-0-691-03643-4
This leads you to the title of an article written by Freud:
- 1908 “Civilized” Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness
Source: Wikipedia
Here are other websites to gather basic information and links to other sources:
Search for Authoritative Sources
When researching and writing an APA research essay, you should always use authoritative sources to find primary material on your subject. This example will focus on Freud’s theories on the id, ego and superego.
This journal article provides an overview of Freud’s definition of the id, ego and superego as well as a glossary of terms. It is an authoritative source but not a primary one.
A simple Google Scholar search reveals these primary sources:
Keywords: Id, Ego, and Superego
S Freud – … XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 1961 – pep-web.org
… Freud’s views on mental structure and functioning. Indeed, the three newly presented
entities, the id, the ego and the super–ego, all had lengthy past histories (two of them
under other names) and these will be worth examining …
S Freud – TACD Journal, 1989 – Taylor & Francis
… THE TWO CLASSES OF INSTINCTS We have already said that, if the differentiation we have
made of the mind into an id, an ego, and a super–ego represents any advance in our knowledge,
it ought to enable us to understand more thoroughly the dynamic relations within the …
Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works (1-66).
Further research shows that Freud File is a website with links to primary sources about Sigmund Freud, including links to his Library of Congress collection. That is another resource worth exploring further.
Finding Other Sources
Once you’ve identified a few primary and secondary sources, you can continue your search within those documents to find more. On this particular subject, there is a wealth of information and you should be able to develop your psychology school essay easily. Check the databases available through your school and ask your librarian for help.
Remember to use APA citation and include as many primary sources in your reference list, as possible. APA format is an author-date style, so you need to include in-text citations that match with your APA reference list entries to create full citations.