How to become a psychologist?

Well a psychologist has a doctorate, either a PsyD (doctor of psychology), a Phd in clinical psychology, a Phd in counseling psychology, and I think there’s also Phds in school psychology and possibly marriage and family therapy.

Depending on what route you want to take, what you’re interested in, how much money you have to spend on school, and how much time you want to spend in school, there’s a lot of different ways to get to a place where you can counsel people.

First you need a bachelors in something. Preferably psychology, as this really does help you later on. Honestly though, you can pretty much get a degree in anything. Then there’s a couple of things you can do from there.

1. Masters in counseling: 2 years, become a counselor (not a psychologist), you have to pay for school
2. PsyD: 5 years, usually either need a masters in counseling first, or some sort of experience, it’s a new thing so not many schools have it, and you need to pay for it, but it is basically 5 years of learning how to do therapy
3. PhD Clinical psychology: 5 years and 1 year internship, most like you to come right out of bachelors, lot of research involved, tough to get in, fully funded
4. PhD Counseling psychology: 5 years and 1 year internship, can do masters first then go into it, fully funded, some research

Your first step is to get into college with a psychology major. From there, I suggest you join a research lab after you’ve taken your first psychology class (no seriously, do it asap) and there should be some counseling classes in the school of education. Take a few psychology classes, a few sociology classes, explore what you like, and then take it from there. There’s a lot of options available, but until you know what you’re interested in, it is not really easy to describe the particular steps you need to take.