History source of psychology
9/23/2005
We are using this book in our class. I do think it is a great book compared to others I have read. I like that they filter through and supply just facts. If you need to know how psychology came about and who attributed to it, this is an excellent source to read. I can say there are times its hard for me to put down the book, then other areas seem to be hard to grasp. Over all the book is a great reference and started book in the history of psychology
Nice Overview of Psychology's Past, Present, and Future
12/17/2005
This book was used for one of my classes this past fall. It is very readable, and all of the names that you learn in psych classes actually become people, characters in the development of this ever-broadening field. I thought it was a great start to get psychology students more interested in the people who came before them.
I use this as a text for my History of Modern Psych class
1/25/2007
I teach an undergrad course on the history of psychology (Sonoma State), and I've found this book to be clear and readable. My students tend to like it and find the pleasantly informative tone and highlighted information to be useful. This book has gone through several editions as the authors build in updates. They do a fine job of making what is usually very dry material accessible to students. A recent inclusion discusses evolutionary psychology. InfoTrak allows students to look up information online, and the book is filled with useful web sites for further study. Some of the misconceptions about Freud have been corrected (e.g., the false story about Breuer running away from Anna O), although the role of Pierre Janet in the development of a fully dynamic psychology has remained largely unexplored since Ellenberger's work in the seventies.
Two suggestions for future editions: 1. Include more from the therapy side of the psychological house. The book is heavily weighted toward the experimental side: the tradition from Wundt, Titchener, etc. onward, although it does include material about psychoanalysis. Wundt could use some filling out--he did much more than introspect. 2. The Jung section needs reworking. Jung's theories about the collective unconscious have nothing to do with an ancestral inheritance, for example, and people have been calling him a "mystic" for a century despite all his hard empirical work and his being known early on as an experimental psychiatrist (physicians came to Switzerland from all over the world to learn his association test method). His attempts to study of sacred experience come out of a rich tradition that includes William James and Gustav Fechner.
Great resource
9/8/2007
Anyone intersted in Psychology should get this book, very informative and if used for a class, it is just what you need.
A History of Modern Psychology
12/8/2007
This text is a very easy reading. It is both very informative and to the point, one of the best textbooks I've had to read in a long time.