Review of Adult development and aging: Biopsychosocial perspectives, third edition.

Reviews the book, Adult development and aging: Biopsychosocial perspectives, third edition by Susan Krauss Whitbourne (2007). The objective of this book is to educate undergraduate students on the aging process and how to age successfully. Each chapter is couched in the biopsychosocial perspective and as such presents an integrated view of the biological, psychological, and sociocultural changes that occur with aging. With this revised third edition, the author had the explicit goal of “engaging students in the learning process.” The revised sections, new research, links to Internet sites, and conversational style in this new edition reflect this goal. From a Canadian perspective, this new edition includes a great deal of current Canadian research in aging, and in general includes more world statistics than the previous edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The science game: An introduction to research in the behavioral and social sciences, seventh edition.

Reviews the book, The science game: An introduction to research in the behavioral and social sciences, seventh edition by Neil McKinnon Agnew and Sandra W. Pyke (2007). In 1969, Neil Agnew and Sandra Pyke published the first edition of The Science Game, a 182-page survey of the major components of what they call the game of "sciencing," a game, they claim, that "like all other games of consequence, is a mixture of art, enterprise, and invention held loosely together by man-made rules." Using the same quirky but engaging style as in the original, in the seventh and latest edition, Agnew and Pyke dedicate a full 471 pages to the task, tackling a host of topics bearing on the activities of science, ranging from the strengths and weaknesses of humans' cognitive capacity for problem solving to debates in the philosophy of science regarding the nature of knowledge. Although this most recent edition elaborates on many of the same themes presented in earlier versions, it is much grander in scope and includes a number of new features, including the introduction of a central theme and memory aid throughout the book (i.e., a puzzle-solving theme), the inclusion of statements of chapter goals, and chapter-end summaries and self-test quizzes. The Science Game provides a fairly comprehensive set of "sound bites" pertaining to the techniques, procedures, and conventions adopted by social science researchers and is accessible to either students encountering these topics for the first time or more advanced students in need of a refresher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of What you don't know you know: Our hidden motives in life, business, and everything else.

Reviews the book, What you don't know you know: Our hidden motives in life, business, and everything else by Ken Eisold (2010). This book sets out to refresh and renew our understanding of the unconscious. It seeks to build on new research and recent discoveries, and in the process, rescue our thinking about the unconscious from the dying hand of psychoanalysis, to make it more widely accessible and useful (p. 18). A rather large chunk of this book is devoted to a discussion of the “self,” a comparison with concepts like “personality,” “individual,” and “ego,” and ultimately the shortcomings of the very term. This book argues for the centrality of the unconscious to the psychoanalytic identity. As such, I believe it is a useful corrective to the recent emphasis on the defining nature of transference and countertransference processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychological Testing (3rd ed.).

Reviews the book, Psychological Testing (3rd ed.) by Anne Anastasi (1968). The many admirers and followers Anastasi incurred through the first two editions of this book along with her other writing will not be disappointed with this third edition. All of the testing knowledge apparently adequately updated, is still there, along with the familiar clarity and authority of expression. The third edition contains more useful-to-the-testing-purpose material than did either of the earlier editions. This feat has been accomplished in spite of the fact that the book is no longer than the others, containing 665 pages as opposed to 681 and 657 for the first and second editions respectively. This content improvement seems to have been brought about through the curtailment of less valuable data on the one hand and the inclusion of more recent and better material on the other. This edition of Anastasi's text contains enough new material in measurement to recommend that it be read by both students of and experts in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychologie gérontologique (2e édition).

Reviews the book, Psychologie gérontologique (2e édition) by Jean Vézina, Philippe Cappeliez, and Philippe Landreville (2007). This second edition preserves the themes and structure of the first one, and has notably updated its bibliography to include references published up to 2007, mainly from international scientific journals. This book is designed for undergraduate students. It is less specific than the collective work conducted by the same authors, entitled Clinical Psychology of the Elderly, but it already dates from 2000. Read more about this book review in the full text pdf. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Foundations of counseling and psychotherapy: Evidence-based practices in a diverse society.

Reviews the book, Foundations of counseling and psychotherapy: Evidence-based practices in a diverse society by David Sue and Diane M. Sue (2007). This book delivers a broad overview of major theories of mental health practise that is provocative and up to date. Cutting-edge research and a passionate plea for multicultural considerations make this is a unique resource for students, educators, and mental health workers. In addition, the text is clear, well written, and understandable to both novice and advanced students or practitioners. It uses a language that is both reasonable and persuasive. Commencing with a fervent rationale for evidence-based practise and empirically supported theories, the authors show the detailed progression of the discipline of psychotherapy within the context of multiculturalism and diversity. The reader is led on a journey that emphasises employing a scientist–practitioner model “with a solid sense of how the various therapeutic approaches differ—and how each can be applied in clinical practice” (p. 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

To Google or not to Google: Graduate students' use of the Internet to access personal information about clients.

The emergence of Internet search and social media sites now permits therapists to obtain a plethora of personal information about their clients online. These behaviors raise a number of ethical issues related to client privacy, self-determination, and informed consent. The purpose of this study is to examine student therapists' opinions and behaviors in regard to the use these websites to search for information about their clients. A national sample of 854 psychology doctoral students was surveyed in regard to their online activities, attitudes, and frequency of searching for client information online. Results showed that Internet usage is pervasive in this group, with the majority reporting daily use of search engine or social networking sites. Most participants reported that searching for information about clients online using search engines (66.9%) or social networking websites (76.8%) was “always” or “usually” unacceptable. Nevertheless, 97.8% of participants reported searching for at least one client's information using search engines in the past year; 94.4% reported searching for client information on social networking websites. Overall, student therapists reported searching for 16.5% of clients seen in the past year, using either search engine or social networking sites. The ethical and training implications of these results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

Review of Intercultural counselling and assessment: Global perspectives.

Reviews the book, Intercultural Counselling and Assessment: Global Perspectives edited by Ronald J. Samuda and Aaron Wolfgang (1985). Intercultural Counselling and Assessment is an edited volume of papers presented to an invited Symposium on Intercultural Counselling held at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, 1983. The intention of the publication, as stated by the editors, was to fill the gap in guidelines and methods in intercultural counselling by providing source material that is both theoretical and practical. The book is geared to professionals in the field of education, psychology, and social work, with the goal of engendering "greater sensitivity and a more professional approach to the task of coping with an increasingly varied and mixed population of students in schools" (p. xvii). The strength of the book lies in its comprehensive coverage. The philosophy of counselling conveyed in the book reflects the orientation of multiculturalism in Canadian immigration policy. Six chapters address the issues and answers in counselling specific ethnic and cultural groups, including Chinese immigrants, South Asian immigrants, West Indian immigrants, European immigrants, Native Canadians, and foreign students. Another six chapters provide the background and guidelines for counselling minorities in specific environments, such as in employment, correctional service, disability service, and education. It is a comprehensive volume and has highlighted the important issues that counsellors should become familiar with in an intercultural society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Personnel management: Canadian second edition.

Reviews the book, Personnel management: Canadian second edition by Gary Dessler and John F. Duffy (1984). This book is directed at readers who have an interest in the practical aspects of personnel management. In the preface to the book, the authors state that the book "provides students in Human Resource Management and Personnel Management with a complete, comprehensive review of essential personnel management concepts and techniques in a highly readable and understandable form" (p. xiii). In the concluding chapter, they add that "throughout this book we have emphasised the nuts and bolts of personnel management by focusing mainly on the concepts and techniques all managers need to carry out their personnel related tasks" (p. 512). For the most part, the book appears to live up to the authors' claims. It is, in fact, very readable and is organized in such a way as to maximize learning. Each chapter begins with a list of the things students should know or be able to do after reading the chapter, as well as an overview of the material to be covered. The authors make frequent use of examples to illustrate major points, and the cases and exercises included at the end of each chapter will be helpful in allowing students to get some experience at the kind of activities involved in personnel management (e.g., constructing application forms, conducting interviews, dealing with motivation problems). Personnel Management probably comes about as close as a textbook can to providing both the background information and "hands-on experience" that are required of individuals aspiring to careers in the field of personnel management. Moreover, in this Canadian edition, Professor Duffy has revised Professor Dessler's earlier text to make it more relevant to the issues facing personnel managers in Canada. Although most of the issues dealt with in the book are relevant to personnel management in both Canada and the U.S., the reference to Canadian cases, research, and legal issues will probably be a refreshing change to many students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Disturbances of the mind.

Reviews the book, Disturbances of the mind by Douwe Draaisma and translated by Barbara Fasting (see record 2010-04898-000). Draaisma is an excellent storyteller. He gets the reader to stand on tiptoe to look over the barriers of time and place into specific biographic scenes and then quickly zooms out for a historical perspective. For North American readers, this Dutch psychologist and historian is a welcome guide on the journey to understand the work and lives of 11 European eponym-bearers: Bonnet, Parkinson, Broca, Jackson, Korsakoff, Gilles de la Tourette, Alzheimer, Brodmann, Clérambault, Capgras, and Asperger. Draaisma notes that he strove to be a “resurrectionist” (p. 3) of the thoughts, feelings, and context of these individuals. In achieving this objective he engenders empathy for past and present clinician-scientists and their patients and creates a work that will interest, engage, and even inspire educated readers outside the health professions as well as students and professionals in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Single chapters might be useful for support groups dealing with one of the eponymous disorders. My most serious criticism is Draaisma’s lack of a clear statement of the limits of his coverage of current research. His brief summary of current understanding of each eponymous disorder provides a welcome sense of integration, but, without qualification by the author, some readers may mistake this material for a comprehensive review. In particular I worried about this possibility when I read the Alzheimer’s disease chapter, in which Draaisma writes that research to date “has not created a single opening in the direction of treatment” (p. 225). I strongly urge that any recommendation of the book to lay readers or undergraduate or early graduate students be accompanied by the caveat that readers not rely on the book as the sole or even primary source of information regarding the current state of knowledge regarding a given disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Essentials of abnormal psychology, first Canadian edition.

Reviews the book, Essentials of abnormal psychology, first Canadian edition by V. Mark Durand, David H. Barlow, and Sherry H. Stewart (2007). This first edition covers the terrain one might expect of an abnormal psychology textbook. This includes chapters on historical context, approaches to psychopathology, clinical assessment, diagnosis and research methods, anxiety disorders, somatoform and dissociative disorders, mood disorders and suicide, physical disorders and health psychology, eating and sleep disorders, sexual and gender identity disorders, substance-related disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia and other related disorders, developmental and cognitive disorders, and finally, legal and ethical issues as related to mental health. Although the book initially may look rather dense (it is not), there are numerous organisational aids to facilitate learning. The authors have more than amply succeeded in their stated intention to present a multidimensional perspective, integrating behavioural, emotional and cognitive, and social contexts to explore the essentials of abnormal psychology. Using easy to understand language appropriate for undergraduates, this book guides the reader through the fascinating field of abnormal psychology, pointing out the expected, and for an added bonus, the unexpected and often neglected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Handbook of the psychology of aging, 7th edition.

Reviews the book, Handbook of the psychology of aging, 7th edition edited by K. Warner Schaie and Sherry L. Willis (see record 2010-26788-000). The Handbook of the psychology of aging has been a fixture since its inception in 1977. Although the departure of former senior editor James E. Birren has given rise to a “generational turnover” (p. xi), the new volume keeps alive the interdisciplinary spirit of the series by continuing to combine cutting-edge basic and applied perspectives from a diverse set of contributors. Section editors and authors include senior figures in the field who have contributed to prior volumes of the Handbook, as well as new scientific leaders who may not yet be “household names.” The volume is organized into four sections: theory and methods, neuroscience and cognition, social and health factors, and psychopathology. Each section contains 3–8 chapters of varying structure and length. With the exception of the first section, each section includes topics that were not included, or received significantly less coverage, in prior editions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Democracy’s discontent.

Reviews the book, Democracy’s discontent: America in search of a public philosophy by Michael Sandel (1996). This book has been widely read by academics, politicians and others in public life, and interested citizens, giving him the stature of a leading public intellectual in contemporary America. Even though it is a work of political philosophy, I believe that Sandel’s writings have a special relevance for theoretical and philosophical psychology. At the outset of this book Sandel delivers his often-quoted observation that the “anxiety of the age” is the “fear that, individually and collectively, we are losing control of the forces that govern our lives” and that “from family to neighborhood to nation...the moral fabric of community is unraveling around us” (p. 3). He then describes how this loss of a sense of personal efficacy and meaningful human ties might derive from the dominance in our society of the “public philosophy of contemporary liberalism.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Learning disabilities and brain function: A neuropsychological approach (rev. ed.).

Reviews the book, Learning disabilities and brain function: A neuropsychological approach (rev. ed.), by William H. Gaddes (1985). The neurological substrata of intellectual functioning have long been a topic of interest to psychologists; but with the development of the learning disabilities classification and the interest in the brain, learning behavior relationships have expanded to include the entire educational community. This book, like the first edition, has been designed to draw together the neuropsychologist, the school psychologist, and teacher in common cause. In doing so, it helps to bridge a traditional interdisciplinary communications gap. There is a need for neuropsychological training of school psychologists. This book helps to bring this knowledge to bear directly on practice in the field of learning disabilities. Advantages of the second edition over the first are the inclusion of discussions of new techniques (i.e., new brain scanning devices and methods, new applications of dichotic listening) and expanded examples of case studies. The reviewers feel that Gaddes has provided an updated, thorough treatment of the role of neuropsychology in the diagnosis and remediation of the learning-disabled child. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Critical issues and practices in gifted education: What the research says.

Reviews the book, Critical issues and practices in gifted education: What the research says edited by Jonathan A. Plucker and Carolyn M. Callahan (see record 2008-01728-000). Over the years, gifted education has received substantial criticism in and beyond the research literature (e.g., Grant, 2002; Sapon-Shevin, 1993). Criticisms have fallen into several camps. One group of critics describes gifted education as elitist and suggests that there should not be special programs for high-achieving students. Others criticize how giftedness is defined and more frequently how gifted students are identified, and even suggest that gifted education is responsible for maintaining the achievement gap. Some critics comment on the programming choices available for students who are identified, and others criticize the field of gifted education for making decisions based on fads and myths rather than empirical evidence. This context provides a backdrop for the publication of Critical issues and practices in gifted education: What the research says. In this book, the authors have attempted to bring together research that addresses almost all of the aforementioned issues. Their goal is aptly stated in the book’s introduction: “Despite a century of research on giftedness, the enthusiasm and rhetoric surrounding...services offered to gifted students often exceeds the level of available empirical support—or even contradicts the available evidence” (Plucker & Callahan, 2008b, pp. 1). The editors go on to state that their goal is to be inclusive, but brief. Thus, they included chapters across several domains—conceptual and foundational issues, curriculum, cognition, affect, programming, issues related to teacher and parents, and special populations—that are synopses rather than comprehensive reviews of the empirical literature in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Educational psychology: Reflection for action (Canadian edition).

Reviews the book, Educational psychology: Reflection for action (Canadian edition) (2008). Targeted toward aspiring teachers, this book provides an overview of the content knowledge germane to school-age education in Canada and attempts to foster the types of procedural skills and dispositions necessary to gather and evaluate evidence about one’s own classroom practises and about the diverse array of Canadian students in those classrooms. The book is well written, in language that is clear and accessible to preservice teachers at the undergraduate level. For a more advanced audience, the book also provides an excellent model of how to integrate goals of content, procedural, and disposition acquisition. To these ends, each chapter includes pedagogical features that help readers activate and connect their prior knowledge, skills, and attitudes with those of more expert teachers operating in real classrooms (e.g., samples of classroom life to ground understanding in experience, models of expert analyses following knowledge acquisition, well-timed invitations to engage in reflection during learning). Particular attention is paid to the ecologically valid activity of reasoning about what students know on the basis of what they say and do. In addition to lists of key concepts, end-of-chapter exercises, and a glossary, a number of supplements and additional resources for instructors and students also are mentioned. A parallel e-version of the text, complete with interactive features, is available online at no extra cost. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)