Psychology: From Spirits to Psychotherapy: the Mind through the Ages

by Anne Rooney

Overview

"The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water"
- Sigmund Freud

From Socrates to Carl Jung and Descartes to Daniel Dennett, this illustrated book brings together the threads that have made up psychology, from the musings of the Ancient Greeks to the findings of functional MRI scanning. Explained in a concise and easy-to-understand manner, it explores various key approaches, including structuralist, functionalist, behaviourist, psychodynamic, humanist, cognitive, and biological. It is a narrative of how we have tried to approach the very core of our being - of what makes us ourselves.

Topics include:
• The ghost in the machine - the search for the mind and how it relates to the body
• Models of madness - attempts to categorize and treat mental illness
• Artificial intelligence
• Mind and matter - how modern neurology sheds new light on the workings of the mind
• Psychoanalysis

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Fundamentals Series explains fascinating and far-reaching topics in simple terms. Designed with rustic, tactile covers and filled with dynamic illustrations and fact boxes, these books will help you quickly get to grips with complex topics that affect our day-to-day living.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781398800342
Publisher:	Arcturus Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2020
Series:	Arcturus Fundamentals Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Anne Rooney gained a degree and a PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching at the universities of Cambridge and York, she became a full-time writer. She has written many books on the history and philosophy of science. She lives in Cambridge.

Adult
Anne Rooney has taught English at Cambridge and York universities and was Royal Literary Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge University in 2014-16. She has written many books on science and technology, and was short-listed for the ALCS Educational Writers' Award in 2015.

Childrens
Anne Rooney writes on science and the history of science for children and adults. Her Dinosaur Atlas was shortlisted for the Royal Young People's Book Award 2018 and won the School Library Association Information Book Award (ages 7-12), 2018. She has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, most recently at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The study of humanity 7

The science of human nature

Chapter 1 What and where is the mind? 12

Mind and matter

Three in one

In two minds

Soul-grabbers

In the footsteps of the prophet

The internal drama of good and evil

Freeing the spirit

One or two?

The mechanism of the mind

The consequences of mechanistic models

No such thing as mind

The tri-partite ghost revisited

Ghost gone again

Chapter 2 Measuring the mind 39

So - is psychology a science?

Ways of looking

Child-as-guinea-pig

Feral children

Into the breach

Towards a science of the mind

Psychophysics - getting physical with psychology

Chapter 3 How and why do we think? 63

Wundt and voluntarism

Structuralism

Functionalism

Functionalism comes of age

Psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic approach

The indivisible whole

No dividing line between man and brute

Putting the human first

A broad approach

Social psychology

Pick and mix

Chapter 4 Is knowledge innate or acquired? 102

Ways of knowing

Sensation and perception

Starting to know

The faculty of understanding

Chapter 5 The building blocks of the psyche 120

What do babies know?

Born knowing

The blank slate

The organizing mind

Instinctive behaviours

Classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

Back to the mind

Psychobiology explains it all

Chapter 6 Defining the self 156

Nature v. nurture

Free will and determinism

Star-crossed

In good and bad humour

Crafty science

The genetic lottery

What makes you 'you'

All around you

Defending parental love

Becoming yourself

End of the self?

Chapter 7 The self and society 196

Nurture suppressing nature

Our mental toolkit

Are we good or bad?

Follow the crowd

Driven from within

Inside and outside the group

Chapter 8 Approaches to abnormal psychology 218

What's wrong with you?

Biology and the brain

All in the mind

Counting the ways

Care, cure and containment

Getting physical

Brave new treatments

Talking therapies

Conclusion: The riddle of the mind 250

Into the future

The one and the many

Index 254