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I considered being a psychologist for a while in the late 90s and a lot of this reading is a result of that phase in my life. As an educator, I feel, however, that it's important to keep up with psychological issues, so you'll note that the reading in this arena has not stopped.
| What I've been read in the past - Psychology |
| Date | Author | Title |
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[Finished 7 March 2008] I first learned about GTD from Merlin Mann, and frankly, there’s enough from that site that the book isn’t strictly necessary, but I still found the book really wonderful and helpful. I’ve just begun really employing a GTD workflow in my work day, focusing on capture and categorization at this point, but it does make my life much easier, especially as my responsibilities at work have increased and I find that there’s much to take care of. I’m using Omnifocus as a primary organizer at the moment, although I’m finding that in some ways, the software acts as an obstacle to the workflow as much as an assistant. But regardless of my own experiences, I can see that there’s a lot to be learned here and I can see how it will make me more productive and less stressed.
Five Cries of Youth by Merton P. Strommen
[Finished 8 February 2008] An interesting book. It’s a bit dated in that much of the book is based on surveys done between the late 60s through early 80s (what’s more, it feels as if most of the book was written in the early seventies then lightly edited to reflect societal changes in the early 80s).
While the work is based on good hard data, there does seem to be a bit of an a prioristic slant to the interpretation, where the five cries were pre-determined, rather than emerged from data clusters. But even with that, it does provide an interesting framework for working with youth, and a pointer, if not a model, for how to do research in psychology of religion
[Finished 25 October 2007] An interesting book, although not quite the book promised by the title. Gilbert’s interests are primarily in cognitive psychology, particularly in the study of perception, so while we would think that this would be a book about what makes people happy, it turns out to instead be a book about how people perceive and anticipate the world and only tangentially about how this impacts happiness.
But getting beyond that, Gilbert has written a good overview of much of current research into cognitive psychology in a humorous and engaging style which I find the sort of thing which could be helpful for teachers to read to get an idea of how to make dry material engaging.
[Finished 12 September 2007] I hadn’t looked too closely at this book when I picked it up at a used book store in Chicago some years back while I was studying psychology. Had I done so, I would have doubtless put it back on the shelf. This is a monstrous collection of Freudian mythology in fable form: Therapist A made mistake B with patient C because of some unresolved issue with his/her mother/father. At times, the Freudian jargon verges on the absurd. Castrating mothers, indeed! I had thought, perhaps, that reading this I might at least come up with some story ideas for fiction. Not hardly. I am happy to note that while the book was released in a paperback version, it has since gone out of print. Nevertheless, I am astonished that something like this could have been published as late as 1992. Somebody needs to make it abundantly clear to the psychodynamic people that they’re not practicing psychology, they’re practicing witchcraft. The few valid observations of Freud were much more efficiently and effectively explained by B. F. Skinner.
[Finished 20 June 2006] Whatever preconceptions I had when I picked up this book and what form it would take were nowhere near what the reality was.
The book is largely a narrative of discussions between scientists and the Dalai Lama about scientific and Buddhist perspectives on destructive emotions. This part of a continuing series of meetings/books. The discussions themselves were often a bit shallow, but hinted at some tantalizing deeper ideas and discoveries.
If that was all there was to the book, it would be a disappointment indeed, but the final section, offered just what I hoped it would: Some pointers to the research that had come out of the meeting and even better, there’s a website which presumably includes some live updates on the material.
It almost makes me wish I were a psychology or neuroscience graduate student (or better still, PhD).
[Finished 17 April 2005] Reading this book, one name kept leaping to my mind: Erik Von Daniken.Von Daniken had posited that various ancient monuments (and passages from the bible) could be explained by the presence and intervention of space aliens.
Jaynes makes his case a bit more down to earth (so to speak), but engages in many of the same sorts of logical errors: His evidence frequently seems rather a prioristic to me. Looking at what he finds in literature, it seems that the difficulty in explaining the lack of internal monologue in the earliest available writing could just as easily be explained by the development of langugage: It took a millenium or so to be able to speak linguistically about interior life.
Perhaps most disturbing to me is that Jaynes’s thesis seems to rest on some sort of Lamarckan evolution of the brain. Although he doesn’t go so far to claim this explicitly, he leaves the reader little other choice to explain the kinds of development in the brain necessary to justify his theory.
Another thing to consider is that some of Jaynes’s theses could be more easily tested now than when he wrote the book. At that point, he makes a passing reference to EEG scans of hallucinating schizophrenics. More modern technology, such as PET scans could offer a bit more indication as to whether the hemispheric thesis that he puts forth is valid.
In all, Jaynes’s book makes for good mythology, but as science, it seems a bit lacking for me. More the pity because the opening chapters on consciousness and the closing chapter on science have something real to offer. Even the mythology does a good job of bringing to the fore interesting questions. It’s just that there are simpler answers than the one that Jaynes puts forth.
[Finished 6 January 2003] A rather frightening account of how social pressures constraing the potential roles of girls in our American society. After reading this, I’m terrified at the prospect of raising a daughter.
[Finished 6 January 2003] A survey of theories of adolescent development, beginning with the ancient Greeks and working through contemporary developmental psychologists. Some of the historical material could be profitably omitted or skipped, but it’s a nice overview of the field.
[Finished 4 November 2002] A selection of case studies of high school students along with some commentary on their relationships to family, peers and school from a educational psychologist’s perspective.
Alone in the Universe by Walker Percy
[Finished 7 July 2002] Sort of a parody of 70s self-help books, but with a serious agenda as well.
[Finished 12 May 2001] Baumeister is fast becoming one of my favorite non-fiction writers. His journal articles are especially fascinating. In this book, Baumeister turns to the question of evil. He makes a conscious point of avoiding literary depictions of evil and instead tries to apply social scientific tools to the question. What he found is that people tend to prefer not being evil in general and attempts to identify some of the root causes (one that stands out is that “evil” behavior is not generally rooted in a lack of self-esteem, but in fact the opposite: It’s generally a consequence of a surfeit of esteem.
I attempted once to replicate one of his studies in which he found that submissives outnumbered dominators in the alternative newspaper classifieds. In the issue of the Reader that I looked at, the opposite was quite the case.
[Finished 9 February 2001] Skinner’s controversial work in which he argues for using behavioralist techniques to shape society. But ultimately, it’s much less controversial than the title would imply. Perhaps it’s just that I’m sympathetic to the behavioralist viewpoint (although not necessarily to the extremes that Skinner sometimes espoused, although I’m not sure that Skinner himself believed in those extremes--rather he was just being provocative to get his ideas debated), but much of Skinner’s arguments seemed eminently sensible.
[Finished 28 January 2001] I’m always happy to read books which try to scientifically study religious phenomenon. In this particular case, Altemeyer and Hunsberger attempt to address the question of what the factors are which lead some young adults to turn to religion while their peers abandon their childhood faiths. It’s a difficult question to address because it’s looking at the outliers on the question of religious belief (the vast majority of young adults don’t go through any change in religious belief either towards or away). Definitely worth a read for those interested in the topic.
[Finished September 2000] Seligman is, I think, one of the greatest psychologists of the late twentieth century, and this book, one of his works for the general populace, is a good overview of what psychological research can tell us about the things that matter most to us: Everyday problems like phobias, weight loss, addiction, depression, anxiety, etc. If only more people would read Seligman and fewer would read John Grey’s claptrap
[Finished June 2000] An interesting attempt to look scientifically at what consciousness means.
[Finished 4 February 2000] When I first flipped through this after I got it for Christmas, I formed a (mistaken) impression that Horgan was Freudian. However, upon reading the book, the truth is that Horgan is an extreme positivist, who despairs that any psychological theory will be productive for anything.
[Finished 30 January 2000] An intriguing inquiry into how consciousness works, by a philosopher with a scientific bent.
[Finished 11 June 1999] A nice examination of research and its applications to social phobias.
[Finished 20 April 1999] Cognitive psychology is usually a dry subject but it doesn’t have to be that way. Unfortunately, Reed and Ellis don’t seem to know that.
[Finished 8 April 1999] Generally interesting, but incomplete. For example, the Beck inventory and a few other diagnostic tools are included, but no instructions on how to score them is given.
[Finished 24 January 1999] Let me be on record as saying that Jung was very weird. Very, very weird.
[Finished 19 January 1999] Rosser does a good job presenting the results of a series of related studies and discussing the implications of their findings, especially in their broader context.
[Finished 15 January 1999] While some of their arguments fail to persuade me, valuable if only for its taxonomy of religious views of homosexuality.
[Finished 12 January 1999] The chapter on eating disorders was especially fascinating, and while some portions were a bit more psychodynamic than is in accord with my tastes, still a good read.
[Finished 11 January 1999] The summaries of Maslow’s theory that I’ve read elsewhere haven’t really done justice to what Maslow himself has to say. amazon.com has a comment from Maslow written January 1999, while Maslow was mouldering in his grave. Interesting.
[Finished 8 January 1999] A practical examination of how and why to bring spiritual issues into counseling practice.
[Finished 19 December 1998] Provocative and interesting. I think that in some ways Fromm’s ideas are less historically determined than he thinks, with the form of the escape from freedom changing on the basis of the sociocultural moment, but the underlying concept remaining constant.
The MMPI: A Practical Guide by John Graham
[Finished 23 November 1998] A decent enough guide except that (a) it’s now the MMPI-2 and
(b) it’s overly invested in psychodynamic theories.
[Finished 29 October 1998] When I first started reading this book, I though Gudorf was way off base on a number of her conclusions. I still think that she is, but she does a much better job of explaining why she’s reached her conclusions than other theologians have and is much less likely to argue by handwaving.
[Finished 27 October 1998] This book is a bit confused as to whether it wants to be a personality theories book, be a history and systems text or be a counseling and psychotherapy text. More than any psychology text that I’ve encountered, this is one that I would write radically differently if it were up to me.
[Finished 17 September 1998] A systematic exploration of where people derive the meanings in their life from a primarily social psychological standpoint. Baumeister tends to be rather dismissive of religion in general and Christianity in particular and occasionally dramatically demonstrates his lack of knowledge in the subject area (“Damn it Jim, I’m a psychologist, not a theologian!”), but still manages to provide a well-written, thoughtful exploration. His defining meaningfulness in terms of its objects rather than its loci is especially interesting to me.
[Finished 2 August 1998] A fascinating explication of theory. I wish that Seligman had been a bit more thorough in some of his empirical descriptions, but he does make his case quite well. I would assume that this book has been a wellspring for further research.
[Finished 24 July 1998] Absolutely fascinating. This book has already sparked some other reading. Which brings up my lone complaint: It’s hard to use this as a starting point for further reading because of the use of footnotes to get to APA-style citations which must then be located in the bibliography. In-text citations and perhaps a further reading section at the end of each chapter--or at least a chapter bibliography--would have been welcome.
[Finished 24 July 1998] A bit dry and the information on statistical analysis comes across as a bit opaque, but I suppose it’s about as good as it gets on the subject.
[Finished 6 July 1998] Interesting theories, but I wonder where the empirical basis is?
[Finished 16 June 1998] Dry and some of the examples are a bit off (for example, examples of inhibitory classical conditioning seem more like instrumental conditioning to me).
[Finished 6 June 1998] A surprisingly scientific book, given how much “this sounds good” type writing there is surrounding the MBTI. It’s perhaps a bit too psychodynamically oriented in places, but much of it is based on sound statistical analysis showing that the MBTI does have some pretty good statistical validity.
[Finished 2 April 1998] A bit dated--the book was written in the late 70s, but still rather interesting. I would have liked to have seen some more concrete examples of the different styles of therapy though. [Note: The amazon.com link appears to be to a more recent edition.]
[Finished 11 March 1998] A truly outstanding textbook. The use of illustrative case studies is great and the organization is pretty good although I wish that different understandings of abnormal behaviors weren’t presented as orthogonal choices.
[Finished 21 February 1998] There may be some good arguments against the safety of Prozac, but Breggin does a poor job of presenting them. He demonstrates a poor understanding of statistics and a strong prejudice against psychiatric medication. One telling moment in the book happened when Breggin talked about how it was widely agreed that X was true (I forget what X was) and then cited himself as the authority for that statement. Sorry, it don’t work that way.
And Breggin’s title and his continued use of the phrase “talking back to Prozac” betrays either that he didn’t read Kramer’s book or if he did, he didn’t comprehend it.
[Finished 20 November 1997] Perhaps it’s a lack of background, but I found myself frequently thinking as I read this book that I didn’ buy some of their basic premises. The developmental stuff, especially didn’t ring true to me although it is an interesting idea.
[Finished 3 November 1997] Kramer, a psychiatrist, is generally positive about the benefits of Prozac, a stand which I find myself shrinking from more from instinct rather than any definable rationale. There’s a wealth of psychological information included in this book which makes it quite interesting. Kramer’s kindling model of depression, for example is rather intriguing and leaves us wondering whether it might also be the basis for a psychotherapy-based treatment for depression. The possibility that it might is really only addressed in a footnote which mentions that cognitive behavioral therapy has caused similar changes in brain chemistry to those caused by Prozac. Presumably, these would be more permanent than the Prozac effect which disappears almost immediately when the pharmacological treatment is ended.
There’s a lot to this book and much more than I can (or am disposed to) write about in this small space.
Personality Type and Religious Leadership by Roy M. Oswald and Otto Kroeger
[Finished 2 November 1997] Despite being rather painfully dependent on the work of others, this
is a relatively useful book insofar as it presents a new presentation
of the ideas underlying the MBTI as regards religious issues. The book
is a bit too focused on clergy and too little on lay leadership and
seems to often fall trap to a conception that all religious leadership
is in the hands of protestant parish clergy (even though the authors
clearly recognize that this is not the case in reality).
Introduction to Psychology: Exploration and Application by Dennis Coon
[Finished 29 October 1997] A popular psychology text book, its size perhaps makes it a bit
daunting but it is reasonably comprehensive (and includes surprisingly
contemporary examples throughout). Some of the author’s attempts at
humor fall flat but Coon does a good job of keeping the text readable
throughout. One assumes that it’s filthy lucre behind the decision to
include such poor study aids in the text itself (they’re instead
provided in a study guide which of course costs extra).
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
[Finished 7 October 1997] An interesting book, marred by the surprisingly strong prejudices of
turn-of-the-century liberal protestantism. I can see why it’s not
universally assigned reading in psychology of religion courses.
Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates
[Finished 7 August 1997] Much of the contents of this book have been condensed, paraphrased and
plagiarized by the Myers-Briggs groupies on the internet, so I was
left with a strong sense of Deja Vu as I read this. On the plus side,
it’s nice to get a lot of this without the mediation of Joe Butt and
there are some bits that are not on the internet. I’m certainly
interested in learning more about personality theory.
Christian Counseling: A Comprehensive Guide by Gary R. Collins
[Finished 22 October 1996] Generally a very good book. The theological orientation is a bit “low
church” (a perception doubtless colored by my own Catholicism) and the
chapter on homosexuality is of dubious validity in its claims of
the origins of homosexuality (its perspectives are determined more by
wishful thinking than by clinical research). Still, it’s an
interesting overview of issues in pastoral counseling. Not for those
without at least some training in counseling issues, but for those who
feel that counseling has an imperative to have a spiritual basis, this
is a good resource.
Counseling in Catholic life and Education by Charles Curran
[Finished 20 March 1996] Curran is both a psychologist and a theologian. This work focuses
primarily on the counseling side of life and less on the theological,
although the implicit connections are really quite profound. The
premise of Curran’s counseling is quite the opposite of the stereotype
of the counseling process as portrayed, say, on Frasier. Rather
than being an interventional presence in the life of the person being
counseled, the counselor’s role is to be an objective mirror to help
the person see what they should do more clearly on their own.
The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management: Proven Strategies for Increased Productivity and Inner Peace by Hyrum W. Smith
[Finished July 1995] I’m generally skeptical of books with titles like this and I certainly
wouldn’t have bought this. Instead, I was given a Franklin organizer
recently and this book came with it. It’s a quick read, and the ideas
seem sound. I’m working on putting them in practice and I’ll see what
comes of it.