1. Psychology as a science and a profession -- What is psychology? -- Fields within psychology -- Major paradigms within psychology -- Psychology in South Africa -- Research: quantitative and qualitative methods -- Research: data gathering -- Research: organising the results -- Research: understanding and explanation -- Research: practical application of the results -- Ethics in research -- 2. Physiological psychology -- The nervous system -- The endocrine system -- Genetics and behaviour -- 3. Sensation and perception -- 4. States of consciousness -- Sleep and dreaming -- Hypnosis -- Drugs -- Altered states of consciousness in African traditional healing -- Shamanism -- Meditation -- Deathbed visions and near-death experiences -- 5. Learning -- Classical conditioning -- Pavlov's classical experiments -- Watson: the father of behaviourism -- Operant conditioning -- Thorndike's Law of Effect -- Skinner's demonstration -- Cognitive learning -- Köhler's contribution -- Tolman's discoveries -- Social learning -- Bandura's social learning theory.

6. Memory -- Information processing and memory -- Sensory memory -- Short-term memory -- Organisation of long-term memory -- Forgetting in long-term memory -- The work of Ebbinghaus -- Neuropsychology and memory -- Amnesia -- Improving your memory -- Mnemonics -- 7. Intelligence -- The psychometric approach -- Spearman's two-factor theory -- Thurstone's theory of primary mental abilities -- The information-processing approach: Sternberg's triarchic theory -- Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence -- Creativity and intelligence -- Measuring intelligence -- Extremes of intelligence -- Determinants of intelligence -- 8. Thinking and language -- Basic building blocks for thought -- Reasoning -- Decision making -- Problem solving -- Language -- Thinking and language: Evaluation.

9. Motivation and emotion -- Sociobiological perspective -- Drive theory: hunger and thirst -- Psychological aspects of motivation -- Henry Murray: the range of human needs -- Abraham Maslow: a hierarchy of needs? -- Psychological aspects of emotion -- Sex and love -- Anger, aggression and reconciliation -- 10. Development psychology -- Prenatal development -- The neonatal phase -- Infancy and childhood -- Adolescence -- Adulthood -- Life satisfaction -- Death and dying -- 11. Personality -- The trait approach -- The biological approach -- The psychodynamic approach -- Sigmund Freud -- Karen Horney: the alienated self -- The interpersonal approach -- Harry Stack Sullivan: interpersonal psychiatry -- Eric Berne: games people play -- The cognitive-bahavioural approach -- Alfred Adler: an early cognitive approach -- The existential, phenomenological and humanistic approaches -- Carl Rogers: the fully functioning person -- The transpersonal approach -- Carl Jung: individuation -- Abraham Maslow: the further reaches of human nature -- Personality assessment.

12. Stress and coping -- Identifying stressors: the stimulus-based approach -- The response-based approach -- Stress response moderators -- Stressors, stress and moderators: interactional approaches -- The Sutherland and Cooper interactional model -- Coping with stress -- 13. Psychological disorders -- Classification -- Types of psychological disorder -- The causes of psychological disorders -- Psychological disorders and culture -- Culture-bound syndromes -- Theories of culture and psychopathology -- 14. Social psychology -- Some basic principles of human sociability -- Social identity theory -- Attitudes -- Social influence -- Racism and racial prejudice -- Patriarchy, sexism and gender relations -- 15. Industrial and organisational psychology -- Industrial psychology in South Africa -- Matching the person to the job -- Staff development -- Work motivation and job satisfaction -- Occupational health and safety -- Industrial relations -- Understanding organisations -- Consumer psychology.