Searching on the web for applied psychology brings up a lot of hits about graduate programs in the field, but the most interesting website I found was from West Chester University regarding careers in 10 different subsets of applied psychology. There is a TON of information and for those of us (According to the informal poll in class, it is most of us!) who would like to go into some sort of applied psychology, it's actually pretty useful!
This got me thinking about the purpose of psychology. Wundt (the father?) defined the goal of the field as discovering "the facts of consciousness, its combinations and relations, so that" ultimately, we could "discover the laws which govern these relations and combinations." (Benjamin, 39). There is no mention about any practical purpose of psychology. Psychology arose partly from the field of philosophy, which is more a field that is used solely for the purpose of studying. Wundt's background in philosophy made him more interested in studying the question of "why?" rather than "what for?" which is the aim of applied psychology. Wundt's interest and expertise in physiology is also under question...what is the point of studying physiology (or psychology) if you can't apply it to life?
When applied psychology started becoming more popular (with the Child Study Movement at first, followed by many other subsets - business psych, legal psych, and the ever popular clinical psych), the purpose of psychology shifted from studying for the sake of studying - as with philosophy - to studying for the purpose of solving real life problems. Even its short life span of just over 100 years, I don't think any of us can really comprehend a field of psychology without the applied aspect. I would imagine that many of us would consider psychology an applied field in and of itself. Even those research psychologists are studying aspects of psychology and looking to apply them to real life. It's a simple path for our minds to take - why study something if the findings can't be put to good use?
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