The study of the brain and human behaviour is a relatively modern discipline. Your views on psychology and how to harness ideas developed within the discourse of its study will be influenced by whether or not you believe it’s a science.

Technological development has allowed psychology research to be increasingly based on neuroscientific evidence via scanning equipment and, for example, a magnetic stimulator that can temporarily deactivate a certain part of the brain (less than 500 milliseconds). Neuropsychologists can determine effects of brain damage on behaviour, and cognitive neuroscientists can begin to explain cognition down to the neural level.

Awareness of the mechanisms of the brain organ and nervous systems is possibly the most important knowledge humans can possess. You hear the names of neurotransmitters in popular culture, especially C-grade yellow journalism producers like ‘lifestyle,’ ‘wellbeing’ or ‘good life advice’ sections of certain newspapers and glossy magazines, which give a newspeak-esque generalisation of these bodily substances’ purposes.

Some of these neurotransmitters include monoamines such as serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline, and what is known as the ‘bonding hormone’ or even the ‘love drug’, oxytocin. I’m sceptical of the generalisation of these substances because it hinders true understanding of their functions and the brain’s sensitivity to overbalance and underbalance.

Although I have only a basic grasp of its concepts, I believe understanding of the science of psychology should be universal and a matter of high priority.

Just over a century ago Sigmund Freud was propounding the idea that all neuroses had their roots within an Oedipal Complex, which highlights the exponential scientific development within psychology and its related disciplines. The idea that explanation of human psychological disorders was readily available in a 5th century BC Sophoclean tragedy, Oedipus Rex, is novel and well-meaning, but has no scientific credibility.

Compare the Oedipal Complex theory with the misinformed idea that we are all either ‘left’ or ‘right-brained’.

Nobel Prize winner, Roger Sperry was recognised for his work involving patients with a corpus callostomy, or a split-brain, due to severe epilepsy, and helped to show that different sides of the brain are more heavily responsible for different purposes.

Those same unreliable publications referred to above have also spread the cliché that analytical thinking is confined to the left side of the brain, and creative thinking the right, and that on both extremes you could either be a number-crunching nerd or a bohemian thespian depending on the way your brain works. With the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Dr Jeff Anderson and colleagues found that over 1000 brain scans showed equal neural activity across both sides of the brain.

Another psychological idea on the popular culture spin cycle is that of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who in 1969 introduced her five stages of grief model that described the emotional process of a terminally ill patient facing impending death. The five emotions are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Supporters of the Kübler-Ross model have applied it to many other causes of trauma, such as children grieving in divorce, the grief after a break-up, and the grieving of a substance abuser.

I see the Kübler-Ross model as a seminal example of the problems that arise when attempting to label psychology a science. All ideas will naturally attract supporters and critics. While someone might read Kübler-Ross’s book, On Death and Dying, and totally relate to her model from their own experiences, others may completely disagree.

There can seemingly be no argument with neuroscientific evidence repeated by many different research groups. For example, two antidepressant drug classes act by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin and/or norepinephrine in an effort to improve the mood of the prescribed patient. These drugs’ development has occurred since the 1950s. The trouble is that certain drugs don’t have efficacy with certain people. The reason is that every brain’s structure and composition is different. Also, neuroscience’s understanding of mental illness is still far from definitive, so can’t administer perfect treatment.

I tend to favour neuroscience-backed psychology evidence over the entirely theoretical psychodynamics of Freud and company. The Kübler-Ross model is close to the crossroads of theory and reliable empiricism, therefore to me is useful discourse, but has the limitation of being the observation of one person. Such a model needs to be considered consciously by readers. Integrity of authorship is an important determinant of whether ideas can be trusted, especially in psychology and neuroscience.

As technology further develops and neuroscience grows as a discipline, I hope to one day read something akin to a language dictionary that is an encyclopedia of how a maximally undamaged brain works at its different developmental stages. Combining neuroscientific evidence with models such as the Kübler-Ross model is the key to gaining the most accurate understanding and thus power over the human brain as an organ and foundation of the human body.