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A History of Psychology
Global, interdisciplinary, and engaging, this textbook integrates materials from philosophical and biological origins to the historical development of psychology. Its extensive coverage of women, minorities, and psychologists around the world emphasizes psychology as a global phenomenon while looking at both local and worldwide issues. This perspective highlights the relationship between psychology and the environmental context in which the discipline developed. In tracing psychology from its origins in early civilizations, ancient philosophy, and religions to modern science, technology, and applications, this book integrates overarching psychological principles and ideas that have shaped the global history of psychology, keeping an eye toward the future of psychology. Updated and revised throughout, this new edition also includes a new chapter on clinical psychology.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published July 21, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 22, 2021
3.5 stars?
This is the 2nd textbook I've read about the history of psychology, the first being the one by Schultz and Schultz. I thought there'd be a lot of overlap with the first, but there was a surprising amount of difference between the two books, which is why I decided to read this one.
It was definitely not as engaging as the Schultzes' (which was so full of interesting character details about those in the history of psych), and had a really specific perspective (and agenda) re: how to approach or think about psych as a global (and more diverse) discipline going forward, which the other book didn't touch upon at all.
The Schultzes' book actually seemed to just dig in its heels more about the fact that the history of psych is mostly that of... a very particular demographic, whereas this one understood the affect of various social structures and biases towards creating a certain kind of history, and the importance of representation in helping people feel that they might belong in this field.
I will say I skimmed the chapters on behaviorism + gestalt psychology because my book was due at the library and I didn't have time to read them all. It did seem like this book went into a little bit more detail about both movements in terms of specific examples of studies + graphs of the data which was nice to see (but also harder for me to read in general, haha).
Other random notes: I found the use of bold and exclamation points in the book to be a little odd. Sometimes I felt really confused about why they included somethings. (There was a random 2 paragraph section on "The Elements of Love"... which gave a certain view of what those were, but... why? And it's SUCH a complicated subject, that it just seemed odd to only give such a small space to it, especially given the fact that what they shared felt like just conjectures.
This is the 2nd textbook I've read about the history of psychology, the first being the one by Schultz and Schultz. I thought there'd be a lot of overlap with the first, but there was a surprising amount of difference between the two books, which is why I decided to read this one.
It was definitely not as engaging as the Schultzes' (which was so full of interesting character details about those in the history of psych), and had a really specific perspective (and agenda) re: how to approach or think about psych as a global (and more diverse) discipline going forward, which the other book didn't touch upon at all.
The Schultzes' book actually seemed to just dig in its heels more about the fact that the history of psych is mostly that of... a very particular demographic, whereas this one understood the affect of various social structures and biases towards creating a certain kind of history, and the importance of representation in helping people feel that they might belong in this field.
I will say I skimmed the chapters on behaviorism + gestalt psychology because my book was due at the library and I didn't have time to read them all. It did seem like this book went into a little bit more detail about both movements in terms of specific examples of studies + graphs of the data which was nice to see (but also harder for me to read in general, haha).
Other random notes: I found the use of bold and exclamation points in the book to be a little odd. Sometimes I felt really confused about why they included somethings. (There was a random 2 paragraph section on "The Elements of Love"... which gave a certain view of what those were, but... why? And it's SUCH a complicated subject, that it just seemed odd to only give such a small space to it, especially given the fact that what they shared felt like just conjectures.
July 14, 2012
Up to Chapter 14 was a little bit dry, but after that, it was interesting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews