Welcome to Gaia! ::

There are alot, so I don't think anyone will fault me for forgetting a few, but I'll talk about some that could guide you in he direction you might want.

The reason so many schools of psychology exist is because psychology (unlike, say, physics or chemistry) lacks a "Grand Unified Theory" that is, an umbrella theory that covers everything. Some claim that this could be Neuroscience, but we'll have to wait for time to tell us that.

Basically you need to consider first that we can divide psych into applied and academic practice. This division is kinda like separating conjoined twins though, lots of overlap and they really cant survive without one another. Applied psych focuses in the actual use of psychology to the world, and includes but isn't limited too advertising, clinical psychology, organizational psych, and craploads of other stuff. The academic side tends to work in the experimental realm and researches psychology.

It should also be mentioned that there are differences in what you might think of as a general area of psychology and a school of thought in psychology. The lines are blurry, so it might be a little tricky to differentiate.

Abnormal Psychology:
This covers many schools of psych thought, but the general area is understood to be psychological disorders. The study and classification of the disorders is the primary focus, but some of the focuses are treatment options and the foundations of the disorders (as in how it was caused).

Clinical Psychology:
Rooted heavily in abnormal (but not always completely) and with as many different schools of thought, Clinical psych focusses in the applied treatment of psychological disorders. Like I said, lots of overlap, but your going to see a good deal of this in this post.

Cognitive Psych:
This type of psychology focuses in the inner machinations of the brain, sometimes on inference, sometimes on good research. They seek to focus on the understanding of thoughts and how that relates to behavior.

Behaviorism or Behavioral psychology:
Focus exclusively on behavior because thought and emotion cannot be accurately measured. Tend to focus on the derivations of Skinner and Pavolov who advocated that behavior was controlled very strongly to the things preceding and following a behavior. Very strongly rooted in hard science, they tend to have very good results in their applications. This is my particular school of psych, so I'm a little biased.

Organizational Behavior/Industrial Psychology:
The psychology that focuses on the behaviors (typically productivity) of an organization like a company. These people tend to be rooted in clinical and behavioral psych.

Developmental Psych:
Focuses in the psychological growth and changes that occur in growing children or aging geriatrics. Some interesting work has been done too numerous to mention, but it is usually a focus people in any field of psychology that work with the old or young.

Human Limits (or Human Factors) Psychology:
A growing realm of study that focus on the limitation of humans processing. Alot of work is done on pilots in this respect, and I 'm not too familiar with it.

Perception:
Tend to look at human perception, recognition and many other aspect that are related to sight, hearing, and other senses. Again, not terribly familiar with them.

Gender Psychology:
Looks at the differences between men and women and their interactions. Studies in some cases the sexuality, or looks at the differences with the tinted glasses of one of the many schools. If you happen to read Cosmo (I'm a manly man, I don't of course ninja ), the gender psychologist Susan Basow writes about gender psychology in mag. I've read an article or two, but I only mention this because she's from my college.

Neuroscience:
A newer field, and although not technically psychology should be mentioned. The focus here tends to be the biological aspects of psych, and the workings of neurons and the structures of the brain.

Freudian psychology:
An old classic and not particularly studied or researched anymore, but I'm running out of fields of psychology I can think of. Not particularly rooted in science, a few things have stuck around under the scrutiny of research.

Forensic Psychology:
Another field thats beyond my personal knowledge, the field tends to focus on the law aspects of psychology. Alot of applications exist here and I'd be talking out my a** were I to say much more. I'd love to see some discussion on here so I could educated myself a little.

Ok I'm spent for now, I might throw down some more, but by all means, anyone can feel free to elaborate on anything I've said. I'll probably do the same.

Though I could add something to Dr. Funk's list (like sport/school/health psychology), I won't because his list is big enough and because you can find all that easily with a web search.

Actually, I did it already:

Careers in Psychology

It's more about working fields than theories.

I haven't read it. But what attracts me the most in this site is the subsection:

Non-Academic Careers for Scientific Psychologists: Interesting Careers in Psychology

I'll copy here the first lines of that article:



It's really cool. You'll see stuff like "Highway Safety Research Analyst", and "NASA Research Psychologist". Too bad this kind of thing is still rare in Brazil.

Wow! I need more time to look through all this. (I'm about to go to sleep right now because my mom is giving me that 'look'... sweatdrop ) But this is all really interesting! Thank you so much!

I think I'm more interested in the area of applied psych and studying social behavior and developement...

i know quite much about:

Sex Psychology
Child Psychology
General Psychology (Disorders)

There's also Social Psychology too and that's a fairly large field.

From Wikipedia:

"Social psychology is the study of how individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others."

Also, here's a link to the list of disciplines that Wikipedia has listed. It's a pretty good and thorough list if you are interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychology_disciplines

Very good list.

I find forensic psychology intresting so i'd like to do that as a post graduate course.