A History of Modern Psychology [Hardcover]

Duane P. Schultz (Author), Sydney Ellen Schultz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1992 | ISBN-10: 0155374672 | ISBN-13: 978-0155374676 | Edition: 5th

This text, appropriate for upper level courses, is a historical overview of the development of modern psychology in the last 100 years to the present day. A History of Modern Psychology covers the rise and fall of the schools of psychological thought in terms of philosophy and physiology, the impact of intellectual, social, economic, and political forces on the discipline, and the contributions of significant individuals. Features: * Shows how ideas, theories and movements evolved and revolted against earlier work and developed independently. * Discusses the impact of contextual forces, such as the intellectual climate (Zeitgeist), the social and economic forces, wars, and prejudice and discrimination. * Introduces the lives of important scholars, researchers, writers, teachers, and systematizers in the history of psychology, noting how their work was influenced by the times as well as their own experiences. * Traces the development of animal psychology, particularly the changing views of the nature of animal consciousness and the accepted methods for studying the problem. New to this edition: * A new chapter on race and gender issues has been added and additional notes on the contributions of black and women psychologists are found throughout the book. * Language has been clarified and topics have been added, expanded, or revised based on the latest biographical sources and scholarly research. * The discussion of machines as a metaphor for human psychological, mental, and cognitive functioning has been expanded to include medical and mechanical engineering and the computer.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Duane P. Schultz is professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida. The Schultz's are a husband/wife author team who are well-regarded for their textbooks. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt College Pub; 5th edition (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0155374672
• ISBN-13: 978-0155374676
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,137,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I use this as a text for my History of Modern Psych class, January 25, 2007

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Modern Psychology (with InfoTrac ) (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adequate, yet not overbearing summation of modern psychology, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A History of Modern Psychology (Hardcover)

Schultz and Schultz offer a wonderful summation of the history of psychology. Many history of psychology texts are large and burdensome, but Schultz and Schultz sift out the waste and offer the facts. Interesting anecdotes about psychology's pioneers are offered, and the social climate surrounding the perspectives of each school of thought is also mentioned. All in all, this is a great book to have in the collection for the average historian of psychology. The authors, unfortunately, do present the information in a rather bland display. More color and layout effect would be useful and appealing. Furthermore, the chapter on the impact of women and minorities in psychology should not just be thrown on the end of the book ... it should be integrated throughout. Other than those two drawbacks, however, the book is wonderfully done.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A biased history, January 13, 2011

By 

AndyN - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Modern Psychology (Hardcover)

This text by Schultz and Schultz is a poor choice for graduate-level courses. Rather than presenting information that students can use as a foundation to build upon, the authors put their own opinions forward as fact, resulting in a clearly biased text. For example, the book states that humanistic psychology was a failure as a movement because it never entered academia and did not encourage any research, statements which ignore the many humanistic Psychology programs throughout the country (and world) and the fact that Carl Rogers started the enterprise of psychotherapy research. Also, the authors propose several "schools of thought" including Psychoanalysis, Gestalt Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology, which are confusing categories and not representative of the movements throughout Psychology's history--meanwhile leaving out whole areas of psychological study. Students reading this text are consistently confused, as the authors do not distinguish well between theory and application (Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic approach vs. psychoanalytic theory), and the complexities of these movements are lost in the generalizations. Perhaps this text would be useful as additional reading in a History of Psychology course, but as a primary source it is a very poor choice.