Some sciences are known in everyday life. Whether people understand the actual knowledge or not, chemistry, physics and biology are recognised as sciences, with a vague perception of what they are about. Psychology is no less a science, yet it is far less well known. Why is this?

Part of the reason lies in difficulties psychologists have in communicating our knowledge. Many of our specialised words are also current in everyday speech, but with a different, or less precise, meaning. Terms like "inferiority complex", "expectation" and even "positive thinking" have a specific meaning to the psychological practitioner, but a most vague and, in some cases inaccurate (to us) meaning in everyday speech. So, a diagnostic statement from a psychologist, while encapsulating a wealth of scientific knowledge, may seem to be unimpressive common sense to a lay listener.

Other psychological concepts are less unfamiliar in everyday discourse. Ideas such as constructive memory, selective perception, personal constructs and social representations are well known and established as part of the scientific knowledge held, and sometimes taken for granted, by psychologists. But they run counter to the naive assumptions of everyday living, in which memory is experienced as factual and social experience and conventions are assumed to be much the same for everyone.

The other sciences form an established part of the school curriculum, and our colleagues who teach psychology in schools are helping to establish the recognition of our science. But we have much to do, both within our own profession and outside it, to establish a similar recognition of our science in society as a whole. Yet when psychologists work with other professionals, their contribution is respected, and psychology becomes recognised as a specialised branch of knowledge. We need to build on this, which is the aim of this symposium.