Customer Reviews

A History of Modern Psychology

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

My purchase was here in a great time frame. And the product looked like new. Very pleased with the service.

This is the only textbook I have ever read from cover to cover. I can't say I have been the most devoted of students throughout my educational career; however, the information provided in this book is both interesting and useful. I teach General Psychology at the community college level. I have been able to integrate the juicy psychologist drama from this book in an almost gossipy format that has helped interest my students. The information provided in this book definitely goes above and beyond any of my expectations for a "history" book!

This book provides a clear and definitive background to Psychology. It not only enables the readers to appreciate the development of the subject, it also introduces them to the vast fundamentals comprising the subject. Although the emphasis therein may seem bent towards experimental psychology with the vast elaborations pertaining to Wundt's voluntarism, and Titcherner's qualitative approach;the last four chapters were however devoted to cognitive developments and psychoanalysis. Overall, it makes a good reading and is highly recommended for students and novice learners of psychology.

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.

Anyone intersted in Psychology should get this book, very informative and if used for a class, it is just what you need.

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