Review of Undergraduate writing in psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story.

Reviews the book, Undergraduate writing in psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story by R. Eric Landrum (see record 2008-03689-000). This review is written from the perspective of a student who enrolled in a course on academic writing and a professor who taught the course. From the student's perspective, Landrum covers all the bases, from the reason psychologists write scientifically to the proper way to write a notecard. However, she feels that the book is too basic, and that students will not feel that they learned anything new from it. From the professor's perspective, the book covers the basics of writing empirical papers and review papers in APA style. However, the book's difficulty level is very low, which may say a lot about the audience for psychology textbooks. The dilemma for Landrum is to decide which audience to write for: The best students don't need the book's basic points, and the worst students won't read it. Landrum's book may be the best of the APA Paper books: It's more original and more effective than its competitors. Storytelling is a good model for research articles, and Landrum nicely develops the model throughout the book. Despite its storytelling theme, however, the book recommends hiding the storyteller: students should sound objective, formal, and detached--in a word, boring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Writing Cure: How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being.

The reviewer notes that this book (S. J. Lepore and J. M. Smyth [Eds.], 2002; see record 2002-01516-000) consists of 14 chapters exploring the therapeutic implications of expressive writing. The book succeeds in its efforts to present and evaluate current research on the health benefits of writing. The contributors chart new directions for future research and suggest the clinical and therapeutic applications of writing. One common theme running throughout the book is that writing facilitates cognitive integration. Another theme is that writing leads to self-mastery. The Writing Cure is a groundbreaking book, but the reviewer wishes that the editors had widened their focus to include research in the humanities, particularly literary studies and rhetoric and composition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Learning About Learning Disabilities, Third Edition.

This article reviews the book, "Learning about Learning Disabilities, Third Edition" (see record 2004-21912-000), edited by Bernice Wong. This book is comprised of a selection of chapters authored by well-known authors in the field of learning disabilities. The book was developed for use with advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the intent to provide current information soundly based in research in the field. The chapters in the book are organized into three thematic sections. The first section deals with conceptual, historical, and research aspects of learning disabilities. The second section comprises chapters on reading comprehension, writing, math, social competence, strategy instruction, working with adolescents, issues in service delivery, and developing communities of practice. The third section focuses on a life span approach to learning disabilities. This book does what it purports to do. This is a well put together selection of readings. It may not be appropriate for advanced undergraduate students with no previous background knowledge or experience with learning disabilities due to the level of the book. The information provided in each chapter is current and soundly based in research. In addition to the research presented, the majority of the chapters also include practical implications of the research to teaching settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The essential Sternberg: Essays on intelligence, psychology, and education.

Reviews the book, The essential Sternberg: Essays on intelligence, psychology, and education edited by James C. Kaufman and Elena L. Grigorenko (see record 2009-00687-000). For years, Robert Sternberg has produced renowned, groundbreaking work, and now some of it is captured in one volume: The Essential Sternberg. The book gathers in one place Sternberg’s major publications. From a repertoire of more than 1,000 journal articles, book chapters, and books, the editors have chosen 20 seminal works, spanning 30 years from 1977 to 2006. Although not organized chronologically, the ordering of the chapters reflects the progression of Sternberg’s work. In reading the book, one gains a sense of how a theory (and a career) of one of psychology’s major thinkers has evolved. The book presents five arcs of Sternberg’s research and theory on intelligence and education. No book, of course, can cover all the areas of a scholar’s research, so readers wanting to learn more about, for example, Sternberg’s work on love will need to look elsewhere. However, Sternberg’s central ideas and work are certainly on display in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attachment, play, and authenticity: A Winnicott primer.

Reviews the book, Attachment, play, and authenticity: A Winnicott primer by Steven Tuber (see record 2008-04633-000). This book is a vibrant introduction and explication of one of the most important writers and thinkers in our field. The British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott gave us many concepts that have become part of our therapeutic lexicon, such as the “transitional object”, “good enough mothering”, “holding”, “the true and false self”, and “the capacity to be alone.” However, reading Winnicott’s work often proves to be a difficult task; his writing is often idiosyncratic and dense. This is where Steven Tuber has given us a real gift. This clear and clinically relevant book spells out with great clarity and richness the main ideas and structure of Winnicott’s contribution and how to apply them to one’s clinical thinking and work. The reviewer provides details on his personal experience while reading this book and concludes that this book is essential reading for every psychotherapist, regardless of one’s orientation or of the clinical population with which one works. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cues to the imagination in memoir, science, and fiction.

To understand psychological functions of writing, in which words achieve a certain permanency, we discuss Petrarch’s memoir of his ascent of Mont Ventoux, Galileo’s scientific account of the laws governing falling bodies, and Cervantes’s fictional account of Don Quixote’s confrontation with windmills. In each case, written words function as cues, instructions to the reader, to construct scenes in the imagination. We analyze the writing of Jane Austen’s (1813/1980) Pride and Prejudice and find three categories of cues: utterance, thought, and observation. These are essential to fiction, but a comparable range of cues occurs in other genres, which have different purposes and can draw on cues in different proportions. Fiction is, perhaps, distinctive in reaching imaginatively toward psychological laws. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Mental disorder in Canada: An epidemiological perspective.

Reviews the book, Mental disorder in Canada: An epidemiological perspective edited by John Cairney and David L . Streiner (see record 2010-14072-000). This book includes 20 chapters organized into six sections. In short, it reviews and summarizes Canadian population level research on mental disorders. While it is obvious the topic is important, a book focused on epidemiological research seemed like it would be more of a valuable resource than a stimulating read. In their introduction, some of the editors’ comments are consistent with the reviewers initial speculation, but there is also passion in their writing and they clearly state a more ambitious goal of showcasing Canadian contributions to psychiatric epidemiology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psyche and the literary muses: The contribution of literary content to scientific psychology (Linguistic approaches to literature 7).

Reviews the book, Psyche and the literary muses: The contribution of literary content to scientific psychology (Linguistic approaches to literature 7) by Martin S. Lindauer (see record 2009-03997-000). Lindauer has examined an area that is seldom researched; he found a gap in the psychology of the arts and explored it. He is at his best describing the arts, psychology, and the relation between the two. He is also in his element describing different methods of analyzing the arts. In the first two parts of the book, Lindauer writes compellingly about the important role the arts play in people’s lives, outlines the affinities between psychology and the arts, and affirms the necessity of studying the arts. He also positions the psychology of the arts within psychology and illustrates what the arts have to offer psychology, namely highlighting new topics of research, exposing neglected areas of study, and challenging existing conclusions. Lindauer describes the scientific approach to literature in the third and fourth parts of the book. He first posits that generalization is a goal in psychology, but that it is also important to capture people’s subjective experiences. In the final part of the book, Lindauer summarizes the issues and states that a scientific approach to literature would “open the eyes of scholars” in the humanities and help them escape “provincialism, parochialism, and isolation.” The reviewer notes a number of criticisms about the book, including its readability (e.g., confusing structure, repetition), Lindauer's use of brief literary forms (e.g., quotations), and his failure to provide the larger picture in some of his studies. Despite excellent ideas and intentions, to study quotations instead of literature is ultimately missing the point. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Editorial.

Presents a reaffirmation of the goals of the Canadian Journal of Psychology. The primary objective of the Canadian Journal of Psychology is to provide a vehicle for the communication of scientific research in general experimental psychology. The editor hopes to encourage Canadian experimental psychologists to take pride in their Journal, and submit their quality work to it. The Journal will continue to maintain a small and selective book review section, and it will maintain its short report section. There is no question that there is ample material to fill the pages of the Journal and make it interesting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of From denial to recovery: Counseling problem drinkers, alcoholics, and their families.

Reviews the book, From denial to recovery: Counseling problem drinkers, alcoholics, and their families by Lawrence Metzger (see record 1987-98723-000). This book admirably complies with the author's stated reason for writing it: "A compelling reason for writing this book is to aid care givers who may have avoided or been baffled by alcoholic clients in the past. Their lack of training and expertise in dealing with this problem has meant that alcoholics and their family members...have been neglected to the point where the problem simply becomes self-perpetuating and expands generationally." To this end, this book can serve as an excellent introduction to the field of alcoholism treatment for practitioners trained in the behavioral sciences. Unlike many works in the alcoholism literature, this book is properly annotated and, to a large degree, research based. As such, it will appeal to practitioners with a scientific background. The author proceeds to give an excellent overview of the current state of the art in alcoholism treatment. None of the particular criticisms noted should detract from these general observations. Overall, the major strength of this work is its explication of the details of alcoholism treatment in a format which will be palatable to students of the behavioral sciences. It would be an excellent addition to courses on addictions treatment. The most specific strengths of this work are in the diagnostic formulation for differentiating levels of alcohol abuse and the explication of a very thorough alcoholism diagnostic interview. In my view, if the reader can remember that (a) alcoholism is not caused by bad genes, (b) patients who have blackouts must abstain from alcohol, and (c) the self-help movements are the primary treatment modalities for addictions, then this work will be an excellent addition to any library on alcoholism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading words: Simple task, complex story.

Reviews the book, Orthography and Word Recognition in Reading by Leslie Henderson (1982). The scope of this book is perhaps broader than the title might suggest to the uninitiated. The diverse range of topics covered includes the nature of different writing systems, speech recognition, the structure of lexical information in memory, models of word recognition, speech production, language disorders, subliminal perception, contextual effects on word recognition, and several others. Each of these areas supports an enormous web of theories, data and controversies, for which Henderson has set himself the difficult task of reviewing and critically evaluating. He covers a lot of ground and has succeeded, in my opinion, in creating an essential resource. In sum, this is an excellent book because of the wealth of material that is clearly presented and closely analyzed. Much of the discussion is critical of recent research and theory, sometimes strongly so, but the criticism is fair, and insightful, and it appropriately reflects the state of the field. It helps that the book is as gracefully written as technical prose can be. The best compliment that I can offer is that in reading the book I often had to put it down--to mull the author's thought-provoking ideas. While the book is nicely printed and securely bound, there are quite a number of typographical errors and misprints (e.g., the numbering of the footnotes runs out of sequence, and Jim Neely is turned into a she). Something to consider when the book goes into its second edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of reading.

Reviews the book, The psychology of reading by Insup Taylor and M. Martin Taylor (1983). This book is organized in three parts. The first, on writing systems, is an extremely comprehensive review of a number of Oriental writing systems in addition to the English system. The second part presents the basic experimental literature and outlines the authors' theory (the bilateral cooperative model). In the third section, on learning to read, there are chapters on early reading, reading instruction and reading disabilities. My overall impression is that the book makes a positive contribution to the literature on reading. An enormous amount of literature is reviewed, making the book valuable from that standpoint alone. Many readers won't agree with all of the authors' conclusions regarding this literature; however, they do make for interesting reading. In addition, I welcome the attempt the authors have made to tie together research on reading and research on brain functioning. Work of this sort can only benefit researchers in both areas. All and all, while the book is probably not a good selection for an undergraduate text, its breadth should make it appealing to a wide selection of individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Communication in management.

Reviews the book "Communication in management" by Charles E. Redfield (see record 1954-06660-000). Redfield's book presents an excellent broad view of the problem of communication in industry as well as information on how to handle rather specific problems. The book is arranged in five parts. The first part provides a general introduction to the problem, and contains highly useful guiding principles for effective communication. It is necessarily general in scope, but it does seem to give too little attention to one aspect of communication, effectiveness as a function of the educational differences of "communicator" and "communicatee." Part II of the book takes up "communication downward and outward," the most important aspect of which is order-giving. In Part III, Redfield presents "communication upward and inward." Part IV of the book is an interesting presentation of "horizontal communication," or such cross-talk as clearance, review, and conferences. In the final section of the book (Part V), Redfield presents his views of the future of communication in management. All in all, the book is a valuable one, chiefly for its survey of the field and its complete list of references and selected readings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Qualitative health psychology: Theories and methods.

Reviews the book, Qualitative health psychology: Theories and methods by Michael Murray and Kerry Chamberlain (1999). Qualitative research in health psychology is relatively new but already displays considerable vigour. The 15 chapters of the present book offer wide-ranging examples of the contributions that qualitative research can make to the field of health psychology; they also encourage reflection and debate on the positivist, quantitative perspective that has traditionally dominated health psychology and underpins its epistemological alliance with biomedicine. The editors and authors are to be commended on the overall clarity of the writing, given the many contributors and the plethora of specialized terms introduced in the presentation of diverse methodologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Introduction à la psychologie cognitive (2e édition).

Reviews the book, Introduction à la psychologie cognitive (2e édition) by Alain Lieury (2010). The goal of this book is to provide an overview of scientific psychology for the layperson who is considering studying this subject at university. In the first part of the work, the author reviews the history of scientific psychology and its various specialties, identifying the main areas of psychology, namely psychopathology, cognitive and experimental psychology, the neurosciences, social psychology and developmental psychology. In the second part, he explores four major themes of scientific psychology, that is, auditory and visual perception; memory; intelligence; and motivation and personality. This book paints a picture of scientific psychology with a writing style that is direct, concise and well suited to its target audience. It presents information in accessible, but not hackneyed, language. Theories are illustrated with interesting and reliable examples of research. Overall the work achieves its goal, though readers may be left puzzled by its title, since the author does not clearly define what he means by "cognitive psychology," giving it a broader meaning than it would normally have in Canada. Too succinct for some and too general for others, this is nevertheless an original work dealing with a broad topic, of which there are few in French. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mary Henle (1913-2007).

An uncompromising advocate of academic rigor, and the last surviving second-generation Gestalt theorist, Mary Henle maintained the highest academic standards during a long career that was an inspiration to many of her colleagues. Her frequently cited publications are models of clear thinking and clear writing. She served as president of the Eastern Psychological Association (1981-1982) and of Divisions 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 1974-1975) and 26 (History of Psychology, 1971-1972) of the American Psychological Association (APA). She also served on such boards and committees as the APA Insurance Trust and made many presentations of carefully crafted papers at psychology conventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Casebook for clinical supervision: A competency-based approach.

Reviews the book, Casebook for clinical supervision: A competency-based approach by Carol A. Falender and Edward P. Shafranske (see record 2008-06295-000). Falender and Shafranske's previous book, Clinical Supervision: A Competency-Based Approach, examined the practise of supervision in the language and framework of competencies. Although this comprehensive book makes a valuable contribution, the writing is decidedly conceptual and abstract, leaving the reader to wonder just how these principles might operate in practise. As if to answer this very question, Falender and Shafranske’s (2008) edited Casebook for Clinical Supervision: A Competency-Based Approach has appeared. The title and editors’ opening chapter promise that the model of supervision described in the earlier text will be illustrated through case material derived from the supervision sessions of the assembled experts and that the chapters of the two books correspond to and complement one another. After finishing the book, I found that although the Casebook did not fully deliver on its promises, I learned a great deal that will be of use in my teaching and practise of supervision. Most of the topics addressed in the Casebook chapters reflect focal concerns in the earlier text, including best practises of supervision, competency-based clinical supervision, alliance issues in treatment and supervision, ethics and legal issues, issues of culture and context, and evaluation. However, it must be said that many of the authors do little to explicitly tie their material to the editors’ model, leaving the reader with the task of determining just how the chapters explicate the earlier model. Overall, although it has some surprising weaknesses, the Casebook’s strengths outweigh them by a wide margin. The book may be read profitably on its own or in conjunction with the earlier companion volume. Graduate students learning how to conduct supervision as well as seasoned supervisors will find a great deal they can learn from in these chapters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)