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A History of Psychology
This comprehensive and engaging history presents psychology as a global science, discusses the nature and methods of historical analysis, and integrates overarching psychological principles, ideas, and applications that have shaped the global history of psychology. The volume integrates materials from religion, philosophy and biology into the historical development of psychology and contextualizes developments in psychology by including a treatment of issues in the local culture, society, and global culture . This volume examines psychology as it relates to globalization, psychology, and history, early philosophical and biological foundations of scientific psychology, the schools of psychology including Voluntarism and Structuralism, Functionalism, Behaviorism, Gestalt Psychology and Psychoanalysis, as well as providing a thorough treatment of women in psychology, racial diversity in psychology and psychology in Russia, China, Latin America, South Africa, and India-Asia. For those in fields related to psychology, political science and sociology.
528 pages, Paperback
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