Review of The February Man.

Reviews the book, The February Man by Milton A. Erickson and Earnest Lawrence Rossi (see record 1989-97424-000). This book is a recording of the late Erickson's hypnotic sessions, in the early years of his practice—1945, with a young female nurse who had a swimming phobia. During those sessions, The February Man, a kindly visitor, was utilized in the hypnotic sessions. The recording had been in Erickson's files for years. In the early 1970s he gave it to Rossi for study. Exchanges regarding theory and technique are explored and explained. The followers of Erickson will gladly embrace this work as further evidence of the genius and clinical capacity of their leader—their unchallenged guru. Without doubt, Erickson was a gifted hypnotherapist. Yet, some puzzling aspects merge in this book. Why is it that Rossi is needed to explain Erickson's work? However, The February Man will still be welcomed by hypnotherapists, but especially by the followers of Erickson. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud and the Rat Man.

Reviews the book, Freud and the Rat Man by Patrick J. Mahony (1986). Mahony has three general aims in this book. One, his main purpose, is to show how dynamic, transference, and countertransference issues influence Freud's expressive style and are also revealed in the linguistic and para-linguistic characteristics of patient/therapist verbal interactions. His second aim is to demonstrate the inadequacy of much of Strachey's English translation of Freud's writings. The third, and, in the view of this reader, the most interesting theme of the book focuses on the degree of congruence between Freud's process notes and the published case history of the Rat Man. One finds in this book two contradictory stances--on the one hand, there is Mahony the skeptic uncovering inaccuracies in Freud's published case history and raising some critical issues. On the other hand, a good part of the book reflects some of the difficulties that afflict a good deal of psychoanalytic writing--difficulties that, given Mahony's impressive critical abilities, one would have expected him to avoid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man.

Review of book: Jack Drescher (Au.) Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1998, 373 pp. Reviewed by Kenneth Lewes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Mind and brain sciences in the 21st century.

Review of book Robert L. Solso (Ed.) Mind and brain sciences in the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, xix + 354 pp.. Reviewed by David Pincus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Statistical methods for the behavioral sciences.

Reviews the book, "Statistical Methods for the Behavioral Sciences" (see record 1955-03287-000) by Allen L. Edwards. This book is outstanding among the increasing number of texts designed to develop applied statistical competence in the perennially mathematics-free student of psychology, education, or sociology. Writing in conversational style, the author unfolds an extensive array of topics with maximum palatability and minimum sacrifice of modern statistical rationale. Over and above the usual material, Edwards provides many attractive features not commonly found in the introductory text. Among these are sections on nonlinear curve fitting, the power function in tests of significance, and one-tailed vs. two-tailed tests of significance. The reviewer feels that the most valuable special feature of the book is the extensive presentation of nonparametric methods, a number of which are described in the same chapter with the analogous classical method while others are discussed in a final chapter on significance tests for ranked data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Readings in the philosophy of social science.

Reviews the book, Readings in the philosophy of social science, edited by Michael Martin and Lee C. McIntyre (1996). This is a large and comprehensive anthology in the philosophy of the social sciences. It offers not only well-selected readings but also three specially commissioned articles by Michael Martin, Daniel Little, and Alison Wylie. The book is divided into eight major sections that address topics such as: Prediction, Reductionism, Interpretation and Meaning, Rationality, Objectivity and Values, Individualism and Holism, and Functional Explanation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Rationality and Relativism.

Reviews the book, Rationality and Relativism edited by Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (1982). The reviewer asserts that the rationality with which relativism is contrasted in the title is that of the Enlightenment, "with its belief in universal laws of human nature and in an all-embracing scientific method for accumulating truths, its distrust of subjectivity and arbitrariness and its serene belief in intellectual and moral progress and in the link between them." The book is clearly slanted to the concerns of social anthropology proves, however, to be advantageous for the psychologist who is likely to be bothered more by theoretical than by cultural relativism. This book is a very important, timely, and eminently readable collection of articles by some of the most esteemed scholars currently working in the philosophy of the social sciences. The book should, for obvious reasons, be required reading for psychologists engaged in theoretical practice. As well, it provides valuable interdisciplinary perspectives on many problems of special interest to cognitive and social psychologists. But, above all, it gives a wealth of effective ammunition to all psychologists who are determined actively to resist the dry-rot of relativism and to restore a more promising foundation to their science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Merleau-Ponty, interiority and exteriority, psychic life and the world.

Reviews the book, Merleau-Ponty, interiority and exteriority, psychic life and the world by Dorothea Olkowski and James Morley (1999). This book is a brief but informative and thoughtful anthology brings together the work of a number of contemporary scholars in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and comparative literature to demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the psyche (interiority) and the material world (exteriority) has not only tremendous implications for philosophy, but also for the natural and social sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Ethology, the Biology of Behavior.

Reviews the book, Ethology, the Biology of Behavior by Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (see record 1971-03810-000). This text on ethology, written by a colleague of Konrad Lorenz, is designed "to bridge the gap between biology and the sciences of human behavior (psychology, sociology, and anthropology)." The topics dealt with include the ethogram, fixed action patterns, releasers, conflict behavior, the genetics of behavior patterns, phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of behavior, mechanisms of learning, temporal factors in behavior, and the ethology of man. The book is well illustrated, an extensive bibliography and indexes are provided. (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 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 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 Light from the ashes.

Reviews the book, Light from the ashes by Peter Suedfeld (see record 2001-18284-000). "How does a child of twelve experience this upheaval?" asks Gerda Lederer, in Peter Suedfeld's Light from the ashes. "This upheaval" is the Nazi persecution culminating in the Shoah. The contributors to this volume explore the way in which childhood experience of the Shoah affected their careers in psychology and other social sciences. This book will be of interest to researchers in trauma, narrative psychology, and history of psychology. It shows the creation of productive lives out of a history of loss. These memoirs are moving examples of the making of meaning in human life and the resilience that Suedfeld has clearly described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Méthodes de recherche en psychologie.

Reviews the book, Méthodes de recherche en psychologie (2000). The intention, the invoice and the type of language utilized in the method of research in psychology are very pedagogic. This is a handbook of teaching. The 15 chapters have an imposing structure: Setting in situation, Introduction, Headings of the chapter, Summary, Exercises, Specialized bibliography. At the end of the book, a Glossary takes again some principal terms and concepts. The level of the treatment, in general, corresponds to the first university cycle in psychology, just like in the comparable works of Robert (1988) and Bouchard and Cyr (1998). The student who picks up this book will come into contact with many interesting questions about the human sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Drogues et dependances and Toxicomanies.

Reviews the books, Drogues et dépendances by Jef-Louis Bonnardeaux (1983) and Toxicomanies by Dollard Cormier (1983. The book by Bonnardeaux is clearly written and is accompanied by illustrations. However, one doubts the utility of the representation of many biochemical formulas. One wishes also for a better structuring of the various chapters. The book by Cormier is an excellent complement to the Bonnardeaux book. Drug addiction is presented as a life style expressing a solution to problems of existence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of the criminal act and punishment.

Reviews the book, The psychology of the criminal act and punishment by G. Zilboorg (see record 1954-08875-000). This book examines the motivation and consequences of punishment of the criminal and points to the "curative powers of healthy self-punishment which never becomes hostility." The author presents excellent suggested courtroom ethics for the representatives of the behavior sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences.

Reviews the book, What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences by Brent D. Slife and Richard N. Williams (1995). As the book's subtitle indicates, the authors' purpose is to assist the reader in Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences, a worthy objective not likely to be realized simply through a love affair with "information" and its packaging. Slife and Williams state their mission clearly: "Presenting (behavioral sciences') hidden assumptions, along with their costs and consequences, is our task in this book. Whether you are a student of the behavioral sciences, therapist, educator, businessperson, or simply a consumer of behavioral science information, you will need to know the implicit ideas in that information. What are the main interpretations of the data by scientists? What alternative methods are available for gathering knowledge? What ideas are embedded in the usual approaches to abnormality and treatment? Are there other ideas available for generating solutions to human problems? Do conventional approaches to business or education include assumptions about the world or human nature that are questionable or unacceptable to the people who use them? We attempt to answer these and many other questions." In most respects, Slife and Williams do a splendid job at this. Many of the central conceptual issues Slife and Williams have raised have been treated before (by, among others, the mentor of both authors and the scholar to whom they have dedicated their work, Joseph Rychlak, but I know of no work the equal of this one in presenting the material in a way so accessible to previously uninitiated students and the intelligent and interested lay public. Surely this book will be welcomed by those scholars and educators who would wish to move psychology and the other behavioral sciences into the 21st century shorne of their positivistic leanings and empiricist pretensions, and re-oriented toward a more apposite science of human nature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Technology as symptom and dream.

Reviews the book, Technology as symptom and dream by Robert D. Romanyshyn (see record 1990-97140-000). This book is an empassioned call to reexamine the history of technology and to remember the desire that propelled it. Faced with the atom bomb and space flight, we can no longer ignore, Romanyshyn argues, the possibility of the final destruction of our planet. True to his vocation as a psychologist, Romanyshyn finds that the path toward preventing the suicide of mankind lies in re-examining, reflecting and retelling the story of our past and in understanding how it shapes our present and our future. He offers us a shift in perspective: maybe we have misunderstood what technology is all about. "Perhaps technology has been part of the earth's long history of coming to know itself, and perhaps in that effort we have been its servant. (...) On a dry African plain, in the silence of the early morning, one can still imagine technology as vocation, as the earth's call to become its agent and instrument of awakening. But in the shadows imagination falters and technology seems less the earth's way of coming to know itself and more the earth's way of coming to cleanse itself of us" (p. 3). Romanyshyn's book is biased, but biased in a positive way: he refuses the detached view of the uninvolved observer. The book speaks with passionate insight for the abandoned body and the repressed soul. Informed by the phenomenological critique of the scientific attitude, Romanyshyn attempts to recover the cultural history of consciousness and the lived body. He weaves a fascinating story that resonates with profound echoes from the past. He challenges the reader's presuppositions and our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing space, body and self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of human possibility and constraint.

Reviews the book, The psychology of human possibility and constraint by J. Martin and J. Sugarman (see record 1999-02336-000). This wide-ranging, compact, dense, yet very readable little book presents many of the key elements of a badly needed, more credible philosophy of social science for academic and professional psychologists. The book gives no specific examples of theories or research findings that might illustrate what is meant by a better kind of "knowledge" or "theory" in psychology, so the reader is left somewhat high and dry concerning this question. Perhaps it is simply the case that these questions about what might be the best kind of social and psychological inquiry and what sense to make of the plethora of theories and findings to date, are difficult, murky, and on the frontier of a hermeneutic reenvisioning of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The science game: An introduction to research in the behavioral sciences.

Reviews the book, The science game: An introduction to research in the behavioral sciences by Neil Mck. Agnew and Sandra W. Pyke (see record 2007-07794-000). This book is an attempt to introduce a student or beginning researcher to the concepts and methods associated with doing good research in the behavioural sciences. The book is divided into six major parts, dealing in turn with the nature of science and observation; experimental methods; survey, archival and developmental methods; statistics; report writing and ethics; and theory building. The book is well produced and well organized. Specific exemplars of topics under consideration are included in boxes which give typical case reports, experimental designs, sample findings, and so forth. These boxed materials are good illustrations of and extrapolations from the material which the main body of the chapter tends to deal with. The writing style is clear and generally concise. Occasionally there are sparks of fantasy and humour which help to enliven long methodological passages. Overall, this is a well written and useful text. It is a difficult task to sustain interest and continuity in a book which deals almost completely with methodological and statistical issues. The authors have done a remarkably good job in this regard, and I would probably rate this as one of the better books in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)