Review of A primer of Freudian psychology.

Reviews the book, A primer of Freudian psychology by Calvin S. Hall (see record 1998-06848-000). This small and unpretentious volume is in most respects just what the author and publisher claim it to be-a relatively nontechnical, yet systematic primer of Freud's theory of personality. A second claim-that its material is selected from and reflects Freud's dynamics of normal rather than abnormal psychology- seems to be a bit overdrawn. Although Freud certainly distinguished between normal and abnormal states, it is equally certain that he did not invoke different dynamic constructs to account for each of them. However, the structure of this book is not vitiated by the artificial dichotomy of dynamics which he introduces, nor is its value lessened as a singularly clear, comprehensive, and unadorned account of essential Freudian theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology.

Reviews the book, The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology edited by Philip J. Corr and Gerald Matthews (see record 2010-05179-000). A comprehensive review of personality psychology, this book covers a range of topics, including those that are standard in personality texts (conceptualisation, biological and cultural perspectives) as well as more unique additions (social pain and hurt feelings, animal models, and politics). Although the introductions are lengthy (approximately 33 pages), these chapters do provide a useful guide to the book and key issues addressed in remaining chapters. The chapters are generally written in a manner appropriate for graduate students, professionals, or academics. Given the broad scope and careful attention to the defining of key constructs and methods, this book will appeal to an audience with varying familiarity with personality psychology. Overall, I would highly recommend this book as a comprehensive source on the broad field of personality psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Dynamic and abnormal psychology.

According to a statement in the author's preface, this book was designed primarily as a textbook for courses in abnormal psychology. It is the reviewer's impression, however, that it is unlikely to win a wide acceptance. His reasons for this judgment include 1) the book has grown from Professor Taylor's own course in the subject and his course seems rather unique, 2) the several chapters do not seem to hang together in a compellingly coherent way, and 3) many of the subjects introduced receive so scanty a discussion as to be unintelligible to the naive reader and simply uninformative to the moderately sophisticated reader. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personality: Current Theory and Research.

Reviews the book, Personality: Current Theory and Research by Janet Beavin Bavelas (1978). Personality is not the easiest topic to teach well. Even the question of what content to include and emphasize is problematic. The majority of introductory texts adopt a stance whereby the study of personality largely becomes identified with the study of personality theories. A problem with the theory based approach to personality is that many such theories are of declining importance in contemporary psychology. In this text, Janet Bavelas adopts a theory oriented perspective. However, she is not content merely to describe and evaluate the various theories selected for inclusion. She places the theories within a historical context and attempts to show how critical and empirical appraisal led to the decline of one class of theory and the elevation of another class. The book possesses many positive features. Introductory students find personality theories interesting and the historical context adds to the interest. The coverage is broad and zeros in on many central issues that preoccupy the present generation of personologists. Whether or not to adopt the Bavelas book for an introductory personality course would depend on the orientation of the instructor. For those who teach a traditional course, which emphasizes balanced evaluation and/or comparative analysis of the major theories, other texts might serve better. But for instructors concerned primarily with developments on the level of metatheory, the text probably has no equal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Philosophy of psychology.

Reviews the book, Philosophy of psychology by Daniel N. Robinson (see record 1985-97596-000). In this book, Robinson offers what might be considered to be four essays in the philosophy of mind. In these essays he has set out to clarify some rather fundamental concepts operative within the mainstream of psychology, and he brings to bear on these the conceptual machinery of philosophical psychology proper. That is, he asks foundational, or meta-psychological, questions about the reigning assumptions in the field. These questions fall into four general areas, or sub-themes, within psychology as a whole, each topic being taken in a separate chapter. These topics will be explored briefly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: The interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality.

This article proposes and tests a social-cognitive framework for examining the joint influence of situational factors and the centrality of moral identity on moral intentions and behaviors. The authors hypothesized that if a situational factor increases the current accessibility of moral identity within the working self-concept, then it strengthens the motivation to act morally. In contrast, if a situational factor decreases the current accessibility of moral identity, then it weakens the motivation to act morally. The authors also expected the influence of situational factors to vary depending on the extent to which moral identity was central to a person’s overall self-conception. Hypotheses derived from the framework were tested in 4 studies. The studies used recalling and reading a list of the Ten Commandments (Study 1), writing a story using morally laden terms (Study 4), and the presence of performance-based financial incentives (Studies 2 and 3) as situational factors. Participants’ willingness to initiate a cause-related marketing program (Study 1), lie to a job candidate during a salary negotiation (Studies 2 and 3), and contribute to a public good (Study 4) were examined. Results provide strong support for the proposed framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personality through perception.

Reviews the book, Personality through perception by H. A. Witkin, H. B. Lewis, M. Hertzman, K. Machover, P. B. Meisnner, and S. Wapner (1954). Some years ago the senior author conducted a series of experiments which revealed rather substantial variability in the capacity of subjects to detect experimentally induced deviations from their own vertical position and in that of their visual field. The studies reported in the present volume comprise an extensive and painstaking investigation of this observation and of its implications. Personality through Perception is, in short, an exploration of individual differences in the recognition of which way is up. The reviewer states that it is a substantial if uneven book. There appear in sequence an exceptionally sanguine and approbative introduction by Gardner Murphy ("...I believe that the work...signalizes a new step toward the maturity of American Psychology"), a brief preface by Witkin, 22 chapters of text, three appendixes, a heavily psychoanalytic and Gestalt bibliography of 101 entries, and an exceptionally serviceable index. The body of the report includes 20 figures and 106 tables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognitive psychology.

Reviews the book, Cognitive Psychology by Guy Claxton (1980). This is a bold attempt to provide a well-integrated review of the problems and prospects of modern cognitive psychology. In general, the book succeeds although one may disagree with the directions that are foreseen. The book consists of nine papers by eight authors. Six chapters plus an overview cover traditional topics within cognition while two excellent chapters extend the discussion to motor control and cross-cultural perspectives. Together the chapters are '... meant to be a guidebook to organizing one's thoughts, and a life-raft to cling on to when in danger of drowning in the sea of detail'. This is an excellent overview for graduate students or scientists in related fields; it will prove difficult for all but the brighter undergraduates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Occupational health psychology.

Reviews the book, Occupational health psychology edited by Stavroula Leka and Jonathon Houdmont (see record 2010-10988-000). Leka and Houdmont describe their book as the first textbook devoted to occupational health psychology intended for undergraduate instruction in the field. Leka and Houdmont have chosen an interesting strategy in creating an edited textbook with individual chapters written by established experts in the field. In doing so, they have in many cases gotten “the best” people in a particular area to write chapters in their area of expertise. Despite their reliance on multiple authors, the editors have maintained a consistent style throughout the volume—each chapter begins with a chapter outline and ends with a chapter summary. Textboxes throughout are used to highlight individuals prominent in the field (e.g., Tom Cox) or to highlight applications and research issues and to provide definitions of key terms. I would expect that students will appreciate such pedagogical features in addition to the depth of expertise that underlies each chapter. Although not divided into sections, one can intuit a structure to the book that begins with a broad perspective on occupational health psychology and then progressively adopts a narrower focus. When I first heard of this book, I was pleased at the prospect of being able to assign a single textbook that would offer a survey of occupational health psychology. Although the authors met their explicit goal of covering the core education curriculum defined by the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, I am not convinced that they have produced a “stand-alone” text that provides an adequate coverage of the field. In particular, issues of workplace safety are strikingly absent from the text. Personally, I would feel the need to supplement this text with specific readings on issues of occupational safety and occupational disease in order to cover the major topics that comprise the field of occupational health psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Review of: Personality Tests and Reviews.

This reprinted article originally appeared in The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (July, 1970). Reviews the book, Personality Tests and Reviews edited by Oscar K. Buros (see record 1971-24993-000). This long-awaited volume is the second of four monographs covering specific sections of the first six Mental Measurements Yearbooks (MMY's). The primary purpose of Personality Tests and Reviews is to provide users of personality tests with a convenient, comprehensive set of information--original test reviews, excerpted test reviews, and references on the construction, use, and validity of specific tests--taken from the first six MMY's. A great deal of new material is also presented for the first time. In spite of its size and the amount of detailed information presented, the book is easy to use, providing an invaluable resource for any student of personality. Buros and his associates are to be congratulated for their outstanding editorial work in producing this monumental volume dealing with personality tests and reviews. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Approaches to psychology.

Reviews the book, Approaches to Psychology by John Medcof and John Roth (Eds.) (1979). The preface of Approaches to Psychology states that standard psychology texts do not meet the needs of instructors teaching one-semester courses to students taking psychology as an adjunct to their own field of study. According to Medcof and Roth, standard texts do not fill these needs because they are too long and students often perceive the information as a disjointed collection of conflicting theories and findings. In addition, they claim that students who are taking Psychology as an adjunct to their own field are not interested in rats and other non-human organisms. To correct what they perceived as deficiencies in standard texts they chose to write this book as a text that was brief, stressed human behavior and was coherent. Although the individual chapters are well written, the reviewer feels that Approaches to Psychology fails to meet its goals. It is not necessarily brief nor does it present a coherent picture of psychology. He recommends that professors who are selecting a text for a one semester course in general psychology would be wise to consider some of the short versions of standard texts. These texts, in spite of their difficulties, would provide students with a better overall picture of the field of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A critical psychology.

Reviews the book, A critical psychology by Edmund V. Sullivan (1984). Sullivan examines three metaphors as the basis for developing a proper psychology. He rejects the mechanical and the organic metaphors as reductionistic and too limiting as a basis for understanding man, and advances what he calls the personal metaphor. By this he means personhood-Iness embedded in culture. This has to do with I, the agent and my projects, embedded in a determining social structure in the background. Although there is much discussion about this metaphor, its meaning is never made as explicit as the two he rejects. This book will be difficult for the typical psychologist to read because the author introduces a lot of strange terminology, and he doesn't communicate in the usual way. He writes more like an old-time philosopher or a theologian, or one of the other humanities experts--like someone dealing with the ineffable, which may well be the case. While the reviewer is in agreement with most of the author's criticisms of contemporary psychology, such as it is not a coherent discipline, not enough attention is paid to methodology other than experimental, and more attention should be paid to philosophical issues, the reviewer sees no reason to adopt his alternative. The trouble with critics such as Sullivan is that they don't demonstrate how we should go about the business of doing psychology--they merely talk about it. And until those who want an alternative clearly demonstrate what their alternative looks like, nothing will change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Abnormal psychology.

Reviews the book, Abnormal psychology by Thomas F. Oltmanns, Robert E. Emery, and Steven Taylor (2001). Oltmanns, Emery, and Taylor have kept their current text within the mainstream. In the first edition of the text (Oltmanns & Emery, 1995), they followed an integrative systems approach, similar to that adopted by Sarason and Sarason in 1989, in which evidence on biological, psychological, and social influences was combined in the discussion of the aetiology of the different disorders. Their major claims to uniqueness in the Canadian edition reside in the retention of their integrative systems approach; the integration of scientific methodology into every chapter; and an emphasis on multicultural issues in which, as the name of the text indicates, Canadian research and issues predominate. With this text, Oltmanns, Emery, and Taylor have answered the plea for Canadian content and, within the contemporary style of text, have done it well. Personally, however, I continue to lament the passing of the era of the psychopathology text, when abnormal psychology actually referred to an aspect of psychology, rather than psychiatry, and the presentation of material lacked the hegemony of a particular--that is, North American--cultural perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of An outline of abnormal psychology.

Reviews the book, An outline of abnormal psychology rev. ed., edited by G. Murphy and Arthur J. Bachrach (see record 1955-02647-000). This is not just another book on abnormal psychology, as the title may suggest, but a collection of readings which may be used either to supplement existing texts, or alone, as an aid to stimulating insight and understanding in the searching layman. As psychology's role in the community continues to be enlarged, there will be more and more need for authentic, readable, and relevant books such as this for the average reader. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personality dynamics.

Reviews the book "Personality dynamics," by Bert R. Sappenfield (see record 1954-05681-000). The text deals with the usual topics of personality dynamics--motivation; developmental aspects of personality; frustration and conflict; aggression and related problems; anxiety, guilt, and inferiority feelings; and repression and other ego-defense mechanisms. The author has attempted to clarify some of the classical formulations, such as those of id, ego, and superego. Of greater value is the author's probing consideration of the various explanations of anxiety. He considers the standpoints of orthodox analysis, neoanalysis, maturation, and learning theory, and attempts to integrate them into his own viewpoint. An impressive asset of the book is the carefully concise summaries at the end of each chapter, and a glossary consistent with textual terminology. There is no doubt that we have here a well thought out volume which is certainly among the best that this reviewer has seen in recent years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personality through perception.

Reviews the book "Personality through perception," by H. Witkin, H. B. Lewis, M. Hertzman, K. Machover, P. B. Meissner, & S. Wapner (see record 1954-08566-000). The promise held out in the title of this book has not been fulfilled. If the study of perception is, indeed, the royal road to the understanding of personality, this road is still beset with many dangers for the unwary or overenthusiastic investigator: analysis by metaphor, far-fetched analogies, circular reasoning, ad hoc and post hoc arguments. In a peculiarly negative sense, this book makes an important contribution: it brings out in bold relief the methodological and theoretical weaknesses of the intemperate "clinicizing" of behavior. The evidence offered by the authors is doubtful and the logic of inference is often faulty and forced. The major purpose of the book is to relate individual differences in perceptual functioning to significant dimensions of personality. The basic research hypothesis is that variations in the mode of perception are related to central traits of personality. The perceptual responses of the individual reflect these central traits just as does his behavior in other situations. The perceptual function chosen for investigation is space orientation, as measured by the perception of the upright. The final conclusions concerning the relationship between perceptual performance and personality are these. Those who depend primarily on the visual field "tend to be characterized by passivity in dealing with the environment; by unfamiliarity with and fear of their own impulses, together with poor control over them; by lack of self-esteem; and by the possession of a relatively primitive undifferentiated body image" (p. 469). So-called analytic perceivers are characterized by the opposites of these traits. And women show a high degree of dependence on the visual field because both their anatomy and the culture in which they live prescribe a passive dependent role for them! As we have tried to show, the conclusions are not warranted by the evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Self and identity in modern psychology and Indian thought.

Reviews the book, Self and identity in modern psychology and Indian thought by Anand C. Paranjpe (see record 1998-08117-000). This book is an exemplary philosophical-psychological achievement, the result of extensive, sophisticated, and enlightened research. Paranjpe analyzes and compares, based on knowledge of the epistemological, ontological, and ethical foundations of psychology in both the West and India, the problem of person, self, and identity. This is a significant book, not only for the field of the history and theory of psychology but also for psychology in general. Paranjpe, who provides a wealth of knowledge unknown to most Western psychologists, demonstrates that the presumption that Western and Indian psychologies are basically incommensurable is wrong. Psychologists who are genuinely concerned with a science that goes beyond the connection of variables, who believe that incorporating a multicultural perspective into psychology will strengthen the discipline, and who talk about globalization but are interested in the generic meaning of this concept, cannot ignore this masterpiece. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Social psychology.

Reviews the book, Social psychology by Daniel Perlman and P. Chris Cozby (1983). In agreeing to co-edit a text sponsored by The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Daniel Perlman and P. Chris Cozby accepted the challenge of producing a non-traditional text aimed at a very traditional market. Their self-described "most salient goal" was "to focus attention on social issues and problems." They recognized, however, that that goal could only be achieved by meeting "the needs of students." The co-editors additionally accepted the implicit task of counterbalancing social psychology's tradition of presenting the discipline as being almost exclusively laboratory-based. As a result, Social Psychology--in its accuracy and completeness of the literature surveyed--represents on of the better books in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)