Review of Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research.

Reviews the book, Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research by Kurt Danziger (1990). Kurt Danziger's Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research is a book of singular importance because it provides such a penetrating analysis, and does so in a manner that is cause for considerable reflection. In brief, Danziger provides a history lesson that not only situates the names and the projects of experimental psychology in the first part of this century, but also aims to clarify the project of knowledge generation both past and present. Indeed, shades of Quine, Kuhn, and Hesse permeate this book in a way that demands psychologists examine their own investigative practices and logics of justification. Through Wundt, through Galton, through Ebbinghaus and others, Danziger illuminates the development of experimental psychology along with the historical and philosophical vicissitudes that have given rise to numerous psychological knowledge claims. If it is true that we must understand our history in order to understand our present, then Danziger's book should be required reading in all research laboratories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Religion and Medicine: Essays on Meaning, Values, and Health.

Reviews the book, Religion and Medicine: Essays on Meaning, Values, and Health by David Belgum (ed.) (1967). This volume is a collection of 23 essays; two had not been published previously. They are divided into five general sections: 1. The Health of the Whole Man; 2. Psychological Aspects; 3. Meaning and Health; 4. Values, Guilt, and Illness; 5. Treatment-Where Meaning, Values, and Religion are Concerned. Most of the contributors appear to be academics, and the emphasis of the volume is more theoretical than applied. This volume does not particularly eliminate that void, but it may provide some interesting ideas for the pastoral and counselling practitioner who would like to reflect on the point of what he is doing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis: Individuation and integration in post-Freudian theory.

Reviews the book, The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis: Individuation and integration in post-Freudian theory by Suzanne R. Kirschner (see record 1996-97744-000). Kirschner traces the origins of contemporary psychoanalytic thought back to the foundations of Judeo-Christian culture, challenging the prevailing assumption that modern theories of the self constitute a serious break from religious and cultural tradition. She suggests that current psychoanalytic theories are simply the latest version of a progressively secularized narrative that has been in process for the past two millennia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The uncertain sciences.

Reviews the book, The uncertain sciences by Bruce Mazlish (1998). In this very wide-ranging book, Mazlish examines the achievements, failings, and possibilities of the human sciences—understood broadly to include history, anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology, economics and other related disciplines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychotherapy as a human science.

Reviews the book, Psychotherapy as a human science by Daniel Burston and Roger Frie (see record 2006-12980-000). In this book, the authors show how philosophical assumptions pervade therapeutic praxis. "In our view, philosophy is inherent to the very practice of psychotherapy" (p. 2). There is a "common ground that unites the therapists of today with the philosophers of the past" (p. 17). Their effort succeeds brilliantly in reconnecting psychology and philosophy and, by that homecoming, to ground psychotherapy (including contemporary psychoanalysis) as a "human science." The book begins by sketching ideas about truth we inherit from the Greeks, then shows how Descartes and Pascal helped launch the Enlightenment with their thinking about truth and the limits of reason. Kant, Hegel, and Marx broaden the scope to include reason, the unconscious, and the course of history. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche interject angst and authenticity. Dilthey proposes a human science neither scientistic nor irrational. Husserl launches phenomenology as the proper study of experience; Scheler, Jaspers and Heidegger react in their particular ways. Freud and Jung come to loggerheads over the unconscious. Buber, Binswanger, and Boss further develop existential-phenomenological perspectives in terms of human interrelatedness. Confrontation with the other and the limits of reciprocity engage Sartre, Lacan, and Laing. Psychoanalysis grows intersubjectively through the work of Sullivan, Fromm, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin, and Stolorow. Postmodernism's excess, Frie and Burston conclude, requires acknowledgment of an authentic self answerable for choices in life: '...[W]e are both determined by, and exercise our agency in determining, the communicative contexts in which we exist" (p. 262). Psychotherapy from this existential-phenomenological perspective becomes "a rigorous exploration of our ways of making meaning--both consciously and unconsciously" (p. 263). The book ends, then, with an affirmation of life and a call to action. All these thinkers, all these generations of lives lived, all this seeking of meaning and purpose, explanation and doubt, all this is our human lot, inherited equally. Each of us must choose, consciously or not, what to do about it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Norton history of the human sciences.

Reviews the book, The Norton history of the human sciences by Roger Smith (1997). Beginning in the Renaissance, and working through developments in Enlightenment science and philosophy, Smith charts the origins, growth, and contributions of the modern social sciences, in particular psychology. The text explores in significant detail the influence of such architects of modern Western ideas about human nature as Descartes, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Other topics covered include the effect of colonialism on Western thought, the interaction of the social sciences and jurisprudence, and the historical sources of our modern ideas about sex and gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting.

Reviews the book, Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting by Rudolf Arnheim (2006). Guernica, one of the most famous and reproduced paintings of the 20th century, was Pablo Picasso's answer to a commission for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, by the Spanish government in exile. In this book, Rudolf Arnheim, distinguished art historian and Gestalt psychologist, examines the artist's preliminary studies and states of the mural in progress. Picasso numbered and dated his studies, representing "the first time in recorded history an artist has created and carefully catalogued and preserved such extensive series of preparations" (p. 14). From those data Arnheim chronicles the progression of Picasso's "visual thinking"--his stops and starts; reversals and refinements; his attention now to detail, now to the gestalt--as he moved toward the final realization of his assignment to commemorate '...the drama of his fatherland ravished by the fascists" (p. 18). This book is packed with rich insights on art in the context of world events, on the meaning of abstraction in painting, on the artist's oeuvre, and on Picasso the man. Significantly, for the psychology of the creative process, Arnheim advances the notion of artistic creativity as fundamentally a process of problem solving, with Picasso's Guernica as a striking case study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Scientific eminence: Origins and assessment.

Reviews the book, Scientific eminence: Origins and assessment by Douglas N. Jackson and J. Philippe Rushton (1987). The articles, with one exception, come from papers presented at a conference held at the University of Western Ontario in April of 1985. The title of the book is a bit misleading, for not all the papers are about scientific excellence, nor do they all deal with origins and assessment. The book has its usual complement of typographical errors. One great annoyance is that there is no comprehensive index. Surely, in what should serve as a reference book, the editors should be castigated for such an omission. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The ability to mourn: Disillusionment and the social origins of psychoanalysis.

Reviews the book, The ability to mourn: Disillusionment and the social origins of psychoanalysis by Peter Homans (see record 1989-98118-000). Within the broadly defined goal of investigating the social origins of psychoanalysis, this book undertakes a series of strikingly original and thought-provoking explorations into the history of the psychoanalytic movement, its place in the traditions of Western culture, and its possible role in defining a more satisfactory relationship to modernity. In addition to providing a sociological study of one of the most influential movements of our time, the book also attempts to put forward a new psychoanalytic theory of culture capable of overcoming the limitations of Freud's cultural theories. The book is divided into three parts, the first two of which are devoted primarily to the origins and early development of psychoanalysis while the third takes up the contemporary cultural significance of psychoanalysis and the author's own theory of culture. The underlying thesis of the first two parts of the book is that psychoanalysis arose from a centuries-long process of mourning dating as far back as the 14th century. In his search for a theory of culture appropriate to the problems of modernity, as in his explorations of the history of the psychoanalytic movement and the origins of psychoanalysis, Homans provides an unusually creative and original perspective on issues of fundamental importance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The adaptive design of the human psyche.

Reviews the book, The adaptive design of the human psyche by Malcolm Owen Slavin and Daniel Kriegman (see record 1992-98703-000). The adaptive design of the human psyche offers an evolutionary perspective on the mind. Reasoning from natural selection, it holds that over the estimated 50 million years or 10 million generations since man parted company from the chimpanzee, deep psychological structures evolved that enhanced man's chances for survival and procreation. These structures are considered in the context of current psychoanalytic theoretical models, which the authors see as being organized around two divergent paradigms: the classical and relational models. After identifying the deep structures and their implications for both models, the authors attempt a synthesis compatible with the deep structures. The authors make a novel contribution to psychoanalytic thought, and their arguments should serve as a corrective for elements of both the classical and relational theories. In their enthusiasm, however, they appear to be earned away when they discuss certain clinical concepts and reach conclusions that are quite incongruent with clinical experience. In summary, The adaptive design of the human psyche makes an important contribution as a corrective for certain extreme tenets of existing theories and presents valuable perspectives on the phenomena of altruism and parent-offspring conflict. The work is hurt, however, by the authors' failure to acknowledge the nature of real psychopathology in pressing their conceptualization of an evolved adaptive design of the psyche. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual beliefs about human values and their implications: Human nature beliefs predict value importance, value trade-offs, and responses to value-laden rhetoric.

Beliefs that may underlie the importance of human values were investigated in 4 studies, drawing on research that distinguishes natural-kind (natural), nominal-kind (conventional), and artifact (functional) beliefs. Values were best characterized by artifact and nominal-kind beliefs, as well as a natural-kind belief specific to the social domain, "human nature" (Studies 1 and 2). The extent to which values were considered central to human nature was associated with value importance in both Australia and Japan (Study 2), and experimentally manipulating human nature beliefs influenced value importance (Study 3). Beyond their association with importance, human nature beliefs predicted participants' reactions to value trade-offs (Study 1) and to value-laden rhetorical statements (Study 4). Human nature beliefs therefore play a central role in the psychology of values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Sex Roles: Origins, Influences, and Implications for Women.

Reviews the book, Sex Roles: Origins, Influences, and Implications for Women by Cannie Stark-Adamec (Ed.) (1980). This book contains the proceedings of the first IGWAP (Interest Group on Women and Psychology) Institute on women which was held in conjunction with the 1978 CPA meetings in Ottawa. The book begins with an introduction by the editor in which she discusses the male bias in traditional psychological research, the purpose and history of IGWAP, the papers included in this volume, and some studies of the effects of language on the way people think about sex roles. The Introduction is followed by the invited address given at the Institute by Dr. Sandra Pyke, "Androgyny: A Dead End or a Promise." The rest of the book consists of 14 papers which were submitted in response to a call for papers and presented at the Institute. Since the papers included here were received in response to a call for papers (with the exception of the introduction and the invited address on androgyny), the topics covered are not comprehensive nor systematic enough to make the book useful as a textbook. There are simply too many holes and too little information tying the specific findings together. Although not useful as a textbook, this book has value both as a reference book and as a historical document of the research Canadian psychologists were doing from a women's perspective in the mid 1970's. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems.

The authors propose that the high levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and the defense of external systems, including increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Studies 1 and 2) and defense of the overarching socio-political system (Study 4). A 4th experiment (Study 5) showed the converse to be true: A challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, a cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control (across 67 nations; Study 3). Each study identified theoretically consistent moderators and mediators of these effects. The implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Metacognition, cognition, and human performance.

Reviews the book, Metacognition, cognition, and human performance by D. L. Forrest-Pressley, G. E. Mackinnon, and T. Gary (1985). The present book can be divided into three broad areas--metacognition and reading; metacognition and selected instructional variables; and metacognition and selected learning problems. While this book can be criticized for lacking organization and a helpful focusing overview by the editors, it must be commended for providing a source of some practical implications for the concept of metacognition in applied situations by people who obviously know their fields and their topics. This reviewer recommends Metacognition, cognition, and human performance as valuable reading for anyone involved with metacognition and instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Beliefs, Attitudes and Values.

Reviews the book, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values by Milton Rokeach (1968). I believe that Rokeach does not believe that his beliefs about beliefs, attitudes, and values are beliefs. The author seems to believe that he presents in this collection of previously published papers something other than his beliefs. Yet, from his presentation it would appear that there exists nothing but beliefs. Much of the confusion which appears in this book is due to the various ways in which the word "belief" is used. The author states that "the task for psychology is . . . to learn enough about the structure of belief systems to know how to form them, and how to modify them so that they will best increase the happiness and freedom of the individual and his society." As a result of the task the author sees for psychology he has undertaken a number of experiments presented in the papers which make up this volume. A detailed discussion of those experiments seems useless in the light of the fact that they are all based on Rokeach's confusing use of the word 'belief in terms of which he also defines "attitudes" and "values." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of science and the origins of the scientific mind.

Reviews the book, The psychology of science and the origins of the scientific mind by Gregory Feist (see record 2006-02942-000). In this book, Gregory Feist sets out to show two things: that psychology of science can be its own field and that this field has been growing along side of humanity ever since its inception. Feist divides the book into two parts. First, he argues for the legitimacy of the field of psychology of science, addressing relevant research from many sub fields and their applications for the future. Part two delves into the origins and future of the scientific mind. Overall, this book makes one logically consider what science is and is not. It brings about contemplation about how science developed and how humans embraced it. Feist says he wants to take on the applied implications for the formalized study of both the psychology and science and the properties of the scientific mind. His goal is to move the psychology of science from its implicit methods scattered across domains of psychology and make them explicit. He wants to unite researchers scattered across the world to make up a new psychology of science that actively meets, has its own journal, and can educate future researchers. This is all very interesting and indeed possible, as long as the meetings would follow the same integrative genius that is displayed in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer.

Many people see themselves as being in a relationship with God and see this bond as comforting. Yet, perceived relationships with God also carry the potential for experiencing anger toward God, as shown here in studies with the U.S. population (Study 1), undergraduates (Studies 2 and 3), bereaved individuals (Study 4), and cancer survivors (Study 5). These studies addressed 3 fundamental issues regarding anger toward God: perceptions and attributions that predict anger toward God, its prevalence, and its associations with adjustment. Social-cognitive predictors of anger toward God paralleled predictors of interpersonal anger and included holding God responsible for severe harm, attributions of cruelty, difficulty finding meaning, and seeing oneself as a victim. Anger toward God was frequently reported in response to negative events, although positive feelings predominated. Anger and positive feelings toward God showed moderate negative associations. Religiosity and age correlated negatively with anger toward God. Reports of anger toward God were slightly lower among Protestants and African Americans in comparison with other groups (Study 1). Some atheists and agnostics reported anger involving God, particularly on measures emphasizing past experiences (Study 2) and images of a hypothetical God (Study 3). Anger toward God was associated with poorer adjustment to bereavement (Study 4) and cancer (Study 5), particularly when anger remained unresolved over a 1-year period (Study 5). Taken together, these studies suggest that anger toward God is an important dimension of religious and spiritual experience, one that is measurable, widespread, and related to adjustment across various contexts and populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Altruism, socialization, and society.

Reviews the book, Altruism, Socialization, and Society by J. Philippe Rushton (1980). In this comprehensive work, Rushton reviews the fruits of his research efforts. Much of what his review reveals is promising: Human beings probably are evolutionarily disposed toward displaying altruism, and a variety of childrearing and educational practices are highly effective toward teaching and eliciting prosocial action and thought. Yet Rushton also reaches a darker conclusion: A variety of forces in society are conspiring to produce generations of inconsiderate, unfeeling, hostile, competitive, and self-centered youngsters. Among the factors Rushton fingers are the demise of the family as an effective socialization agency, the abundance of violent fare in the media, and the failure of the school to face its role as moral tutor. Rushton draws on evidence from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and education to support the disturbing thesis that he reiterate several times throughout his book: 'Altruism is the central problem facing society today." He goes on to consider strategies for improving the social environment to rectify the problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Trauma and human existence: Autobiographical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical reflections.

Reviews the book, Trauma and human existence: Autobiographical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical reflections by Robert Stolorow (see record 2007-07947-000). The author discribes his book as a “project (that) has occupied (him) now for more than 16 years” (p. 45) starting six months after the tragic death to metastatic cancer of his 34-year-old wife Daphne (“Dede”) Stolorow, on February 23, 1991. His book exemplifies a value, deeply shared by the author and his late wife, that of “staying rooted in one’s own genuine painful emotional experiences” (p. 46). The volume is very dense (50 pages of text, total), the product of 16 years of intense and sensitive reflection. It condenses in very short order the history of his intersubjective perspective on developmental trauma, (the outcome of invalidating malattunement in the “parent–child mutual regulation system” lending to unbearable affect states in search of a “relational home”), his theory of the phenomenology of trauma (the shattering of “absolutisms of everyday life”), trauma’s temporality (trauma freeze frames the past and the future into an eternal present), and, finally an analysis of the ontological or universally constitutive aspect of trauma in our lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)