If you're like most people coming to this fascinating field for the first time, the picture is apt to be a very familiar one.

A quiet room. A leather couch. A neatly bearded, scholarly looking gentleman seated off to the side, only rarely speaking, quietly taking notes and occasionally nodding as the couch's supine occupant tells his or her story.

In some ways, such a picture would indeed be accurate, a confirmation not only of the importance of Sigmund Freud in the history of psychology but also of the degree Freud dominates the popular perception of this discipline.

But the picture would be inaccurate, as well.

Freud was a physician, and the majority of psychologists are not. Both the psychoanalytic theory he pioneered and the therapeutic approach it was based on–psychoanalysis–have seen their dominance wane in recent years. And psychologists today, as indebted as they may be to Freud's landmark explorations of our psychological landscape, are involved in far more than helping people cope with inner demons.

The expansive and varied roles of contemporary psychologists create another common image—of a crowd of white-coated researchers gathered around a maze, carefully recording a white rat's performance. It's another inadequate picture because experimental psychologists today usually work with people, not animals.

Moreover, the areas of interest those psychologists are pursuing now encompass every part of the process we use to develop and function as people: