A History of Modern Psychology (with InfoTrac ) [Hardcover]

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

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0534557759 | ISBN-13: 978-0534557751 | Publication Date: July 2, 2003 | Edition: 8

A market leader for over 30 years, A HISTORY OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY has been praised for its comprehensive coverage and biographical approach. Focusing on modern psychology, the text's coverage begins with the late 19th century. The authors personalize the history of psychology not only by presenting biographical information on influential theorists, but also by showing how major events in those theorists' lives have affected their ideas, approaches, and methods. Substantial updates in this edition include discussions of evolutionary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and positive psychology. The result is a text that is as timely and relevant today as it was when it was first introduced.

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 552 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 8 edition (July 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0534557759
• ISBN-13: 978-0534557751
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 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.

4 of 4 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.