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)     

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 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 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)     

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 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 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 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 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)     

Review of Annals of theoretical psychology.

Reviews the book, Annals of theoretical psychology by Joseph R. Royce and Leendert P. Mos (1984). Annals of theoretical psychology is another publication of the Centre for Advanced Study in Theoretical Psychology of the University of Alberta. The aim of Annals is to provide an outlet for psychologists and others interested in "substantive theory, metatheory, or a mixture thereof" (p. xv). The book itself has no single unifying theme beyond the interest in theory and metatheory that all contributors profess. In fact, this reviewer was impressed by the importance of a commitment to a general theoretical framework--or even ideology--for most contributors (e.g., Bindra, Henle, Weimer, Rozeboom, Eysenck) and the difficulties of communicating across different viewpoints. Nevertheless, this publication, particularly if it appears on an annual basis, may provide a valuable service to psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychoanalysis: Freud’s cognitive psychology.

Reviews the book, Psychoanalysis: Freud’s cognitive psychology by Matthew Hugh Erdelyi (see record 1985-97974-000). Few psychoanalytic clinicians or experimental psychologists ever bother to develop a historical or meta-theoretical perspective on their discipline, or pause to ponder the obstacles encountered and avenues taken or ignored en route to a synthesis between psychoanalytic, experimental and cognitive psychology. For those who have already pondered these issues somewhat, Erdelyi's book is a positive pleasure, full of penetrating insights, programmatic suggestions and astute historical reflections. For those new to the area, it is the best available introduction to the field, grounded, as it is, in a fluent grasp of the various methods and models of unconscious mental processes in these increasingly convergent fields of inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Handbook of social psychology.

Reviews the book "Handbook of social psychology" (Volumes I and II), edited by G. Lindzey (see record 1955-03817-000). This book is a major attempt to present, summarized in handbook fashion, what is known theoretically, methodologically, and substantively in the area of social psychology. The various chapters include contributions by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and statisticians. Most of the chapters are written carefully and thoughtfully. It is a good and worth-while book to have in print. Many students and research workers will have occasion to refer to it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Methods of theoretical psychology.

Reviews the book, Methods of theoretical psychology by André Kukla (see record 2001-18914-000). This comprehensive survey of the tools of theoretical psychology is the culmination of the author's previous writings (e.g., Kukla 1989, 1995) wherein he tried to "convince psychologists that our discipline had suffered from a gross and systematic underestimation of the scope, variety, and import of theoretical work" and "persuade my colleagues that there are many important theoretical issues the resolution of which does not call for empirical research" (p. xi). This is not a book in theoretical psychology (the author cites as examples the volumes by Marx and Hillix, and Wolman), but a book about theoretical psychology, the "types of theoretical activities" that "require nothing but thinking" (p. xi). Notable is the book's epigraph, a quotation from Jerry Fodor claiming that the distinction between psychological and philosophical theorizing is merely heuristic, and issuing the moral challenge for a plurality of argument styles that transcends disciplines. For Kukla has written a book about the logic of science, or what was traditionally referred to as the philosophy of science, and, as might be expected, examples are strewn throughout from the natural sciences as well as some classic theoretical problems in psychology, most notably, cognitive science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Aristotle’s psychology.

Reviews the book, Aristotle's psychology by Daniel N. Robinson (see record 1989-98377-000) . Daniel Robinson has provided an excellent introduction to an overview of Aristotle's psychology, giving background necessary for understanding that psychology, teasing a psychology out the variety of Aristotle's work, and placing Aristotle's psychology sympathetically within the broader scope of his scientific inquiry. Robinson takes on difficult issues such as the relation between Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle's theory of causation, and what Aristotle meant by soul, and he deals with them lucidly and deftly. His writing is clean and to the point, never requiring one to become a philologist or classicist, but at the same time dealing with the issues with sufficient depth and sophistication not to caricature Aristotle's work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cross-cultural research methods in psychology.

Reviews the book, Cross-cultural research methods in psychology edited by David Matsumoto and Fons J. R. Van de Vijver (see record 2010-22491-000). The purpose of this book is to further the potential of cross-cultural psychology by helping researchers to understand the unique difficulties inherent in the field and the current methodologies used to advance quality research. Matsumoto and van de Vijver have compiled a comprehensive yet simply organized volume that speaks to the theoretical and analytic issues met by graduate students and advanced researchers alike. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of APA dictionary of psychology.

Reviews the book, APA dictionary of psychology by Gary R. VandenBos (see record 2006-11044-000). This book is an impressive comprehensive reference book that includes germane entries of overlapping and interrelated disciplines. This dictionary is a useful resource not only for professionals who work in the field of psychology, but also for the professionals who work in related and/or overlapping disciplines (e.g., social workers, psychiatrists, practitioners, lawyers). The long list of editors and contributors shows that the making of this book was a major joint effort. The hard-covered book has 1,023 pages and more than 25,000 entries that are accompanied by thousands of cross-references. The dictionary provides a brief history of the book's development and a brief guide to its layout and format. The book has high-quality paper, a double-column layout, large boldface headwords, and small boldface subentries, all of which make it easy to read. In addition, each entry is generously indented under the headword making the pages appear less crowded when compared to other dictionaries. The size of the book is very reasonable, which will be appealing to the reader. Overall, this high-quality dictionary is a very useful resource for professionals and students in the field of psychology, as well as for professionals in related disciplines. Regardless of whether the reader is a professional or novice, he or she will no doubt appreciate this comprehensive "user friendly" dictionary. The wait for a psychology reference book was worth it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Directions in Soviet social psychology.

Reviews the book, Directions in Soviet social psychology, edited by Lloyd H. Strickland (1984). This book is about collectives: not just any organized group that might be so called in the Soviet Union, but groups that have attained (or are in the process of attaining) a genuine collectivity, internal cohesiveness, or solidarity. The editor has put together ten chapters, each by one or more of the Soviet Union's most prominent social psychologists. The contributions were written with a view to giving Western psychologists--in as nonpolemic a manner as possible--an understanding of the various problem areas in Soviet social psychology, of where they have come from historically, of what Soviet psychologists see as the major issues, of how they do research, and of some of their findings and conclusions. The contributions appear diverse. They deal with subjects as varied as the self-concept, communication, cognitive processes, person perception, self-discipline, management, and industrial psychology. Beneath the diversity, however, emerges a common preoccupation with the collective, its development and dynamics. This unity of underlying concern, in turn, lends the book a remarkable coherence. The book is, however, not without its difficulties. The main one is a certain opacity characteristic of English translations of Russian scientific works. The editor acknowledges and discusses this problem in an afterword. He has also provided the reader with an informative preface that explains how the book came about, and each chapter is headed by a brief but helpful introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Problems of theoretical psychology.

Reviews the book, Problems of theoretical psychology edited by Charles W. Tolman, Frances Cherry, René van Herzewijk, and Ian Lubek (see record 1997-97223-000). This is the sixth volume of selected, edited proceedings of the biennial conferences of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP). All of the contributions to the current volume have been drawn from symposia and papers presented at the sixth conference held at Carlton University, May 21-26,1995. The 40 papers published in this book are grouped into seven sections, the first two of which were presented as symposia at die Carleton conference. The papers in the remaining five sections are grouped thematically under the headings: Language, Discourse, and Meaning; Cognition and Cognitive Science; Social Psychology, Personality, Self, and Identity; and Methodological and Historical Issues. According to the reviewer, overall, the quality of the papers was uniformly high; the issues under discussion will interest anyone with even a modicum of conceptual or theoretical concern; the writing and presentation are engaging and mostly accessible; and the diversity and multiplicity of perspectives are decidedly stimulating. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)