Product Description

Psychology is part of everyone's experience: it influences the way we think about everything from education and intelligence, to relationships and emotions, advertising and criminality. People readily behave as amateur psychologists, offering explanations for what people think, feel, and do. But what exactly are psychologists trying to do? What scientific grounding do they have for their approach? This book provides an understanding of some of psychology's leading ideas and their practical relevance, making it a stimulating introduction for anyone interested in understanding the human mind

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21437 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Gillian Butler now works as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Warneford Hospital, Oxford, having previously spent nearly ten years doing research in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University. She is co-author (with Tony Hope) of Manage Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide.

Freda McManus is a Research Cognitive Therapist in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University. She works on the development and evaluation of psychological treatments for anxiety disorders.

Customer Reviews

A broad scope and a straightforward approach
A sleeves-rolled-up, business-like, straightforward survey of the field. Psychoanalysis is given short shrift. Freud gets a brief mention, but Jung, Adler and Reich get none at all. Not surprisingly, parapsychology, hypnotherapy and other fringe theories and therapies are also totally ignored. This is mainstream, orthodox psychology as taught at undergraduate level, the tradition that began with William James and is current in the profession.

The authors go for breadth rather than depth and manage to cover a surprising array of topics, and do so in a reliable and authoritative manner. They do slip up a couple of times, for example when mentioning linguistic relativity and reiterating the old myth about the plethora of Eskimo words for 'snow'. They wisely stay well away from the philosophical dimensions of the subject, such as the nature of consciousness. They simply use 'consciousness', 'awareness' and 'mindfulness' as if their meanings were transparent, which is fair enough in a book of this nature.

In these Very Short Introductions, space is at a premium and the few illustrations should be carefully chosen. Here we have a picture of a happy couple standing atop a hill, supposedly to illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing drives from goals. Would I be right in assuming it is actually a picture of one of the authors with a friend? A touch of irritating self-indulgence.

So, not the best entry in this series, but if you are looking for a current introduction to mainstream psychology and psychiatry, readable and informative, this is an excellent choice.

An ideal introduction for the layman
I picked up this book as I have a personal interest in the area and also because it tentatively relates to my line of work (sales).

It does "what it says on the tin"! It is readable, succinct and easily understood, with graphics, tables and photos to illustrate or emphasise key points.

It's an huge challenge to cram a subject like psychology into a tiny book like this, but the authors seem to have done a great job. If you don't require any depth in particular, this is the book for you.

A good solid starter
This was just the kind of entry into the subject that I was looking for, an intro into the various fields within pyschology (behavioural, developmental etc)which will lead me into further targeted reading. Good stuff.