Description
Book SynopsisPsychology is a diverse assortment of fields with distinct referents, often using the same terms, and it is not always easy to identify its shared assumptions. At base, the academic variants tend to include the notion that mental activity takes place in hard-to-access inner spaces, making it more appropriate to study behavioral manifestations of it, yet all of it can be represented in an expert language with a confusing relationship to physiological mechanisms. An Advanced Guide to Psychological Thinking: Critical and Historical Perspectives focuses on several key areas in psychology: learning, the brain, child development, and psychotherapy, and identifies several conceptual tensions that ground psychological understanding of various phenomena. These include a tension between inside and outside, structure and function, higher and lower, and description and explanation; all have historically generated confusion at the heart of the discipline. As psychology was transformed into the stud
Trade ReviewThis historical-philosophical treatment traces the twisting path from psychology's early assumptions, choices, blind spots, and misdirections to current explanations of what we claim to know about mind and behavior and why we seem to be so sure. Highlighting common themes that tie together disparate arenas within modern psychology, this thought-provoking corrective to triumphalism is useful for both mainstream and critical approaches to the field. -- Dennis Fox, University of Illinois at Springfield
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: The Creation of Mind Chapter Two: A Multiplicity of Psychologies Chapter Three: Methods of Psychology Chapter Four: The Principles of Learning Chapter Five: Biology, Brain and Behavior Chapter Six: On Developmental Thinking Chapter Seven: The Cure of the Soul in the Age of the Therapeutic Conclusion Works Cited About the Author
