A standard introductory textbook focusing on the scientific roots of the field while emphasizing its practical value and relevance to society. The first edition was published in 1989. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Designed for students from a wide range of backgrounds, this text takes a chronological and interdisciplinary approach to human development. With its focus on context and culture, the 8/E illustrates that the status of human development is inextricably embedded in a study of complex and changing cultures.
This book presents an overview of Mexican ethnopsychology, an original theoretical and methodological approach that seeks to complement the mainstream psychological science – based on universal principles, processes and constructs – with scientific methods to study the idiosyncratic features and behaviors typical of specific cultural groups. It proposes a historic-bio-psycho-socio-cultural theoretical model to describe research findings of social, psychological, collective and individual phenomena. Psychology is at a crossroads of years of research with stress on internal validity and little attention to contextual and cultural variables. It becomes fundamental to continue on the internal validity track but at the same time incorporate external validity issues. The growth of indigenous movements and data allows for a profound evaluation of the extents to which apparent universal phenomena are truly universal, and to what extent they are idiosyncratic manifestations of the cultures where the mainstream research is conducted. Mexican ethnopsychologists have been following this path for decades, since the pioneer work of Rogelio Díaz-Guerrero, but until now little has been published in English about this innovative theoretical approach. Ethnopsychology – Pieces from the Mexican Research Gallery fills this gap by presenting the international community an overview of Mexican ethnopsychology and thus providing a useful tool to behavioral, social and health scientists interested in understanding how culture shapes both collective and individual behaviors.
While acknowledging their major debt to Europeans like Freud, Piaget, Erickson, Lewin, and Jung, American psychologists generally concentrated on developments in American psychology. And this tendency prevails in spite of the fact that innovations—in sport psychology and clinical neuropsychology, for example—have continued to come from abroad. International Psychology is a much-needed exposition of the state of psychology in forty-five countries, including the Soviet Union and the United States. Emphasizing the period from 1960 to the present, and surveying the training, research, and practice of psychologists on six continents, this volume introduces a widely dispersed network of occupational kinfolk, many of whom have scant knowledge of one another. The editors provide a panoramic view in the opening chapter, as well as an epilogue and name and subject indexes. The contributors, nearly all distinguished psychologists in their countries, represent Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, the German Democratic Republic, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.
Unique to the book are the appendices that enable interested readers to test hypotheses of their own devising related to the psychological importance and/or favorability of selected sets of person descriptors in different cultural settings. Appendix D provides, for the first time, the individual item values for the Five Factor scoring system for the Adjective Check List described by FormyDuval, Williams, Patterson, and Fogle (1995)."--Page ix
This book offers a theoretical and epistemological-methodological framework as an alternative approach to the instrumental-descriptive methodology that has prevailed in psychology to date. It discusses the differences between the proposed approach and other theoretical and methodological positions, such as discourse analysis, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Further, it puts forward a proposal that allows the demands of studying subjectivity to be addressed from a cultural-historical standpoint. The book mainly highlights case studies that have been conducted in various countries, and which employ or depart from the theoretical, epistemological and methodological proposals that guide this book. The research discussed here introduces readers to new discussions on theoretical and methodological issues in subjectivity that have increasingly attracted interest.
There are three basic ways for a nation to organize its economy: command, tradition and free market. It is a free market economy, also known as capitalism, that by far has proved the most successful in securing prosperity and providing the foundation for other liberties. A market economy is based on the tenets of economic freedom which include the liberty to enter any cup on, start any business, produce any good, offer any service, charge any price and operate an enterprise as one chooses in an atmosphere of limited government. This book presents the history of economic freedom from the time of Colonial America to the modern era. It also explores economic freedom's relationship to personal and political liberties as well as to such concerns as efficiency, prosperity, equality and domestic tranquility. It stresses the importance of the classical, religious and economic, virtues; provides a discussion of both the Old and New Testaments and analyses the relationships of freedom and wealth to happiness.
Subjectivity and Critical Mental Health: Lessons from Brazil presents and discusses subjectivity as a key concept to challenge the individualized and reified perspective that psychology and mental health studies have traditionally sustained. Situated against the maintenance of hierarchical, unilateral and objectifying relations within mental health, this book is a timely and necessary critical intervention. Drawing on González Rey’s cultural-historical theory of subjectivity, the author constructs points of convergence with critical social psychology, as well as with some critiques from traditional psychiatry based on antipsychiatry. Using empirical findings from original research undertaken in Brazilian community mental health services, a complex articulation between mental health, education and subjective development is proposed by emphasizing a unified research/professional practice, based on an ethics of the subject. Ending by examining possible alternatives for critical mental health that engage with culture and society, the book sets the stage for further re-thinking of research and practice within the critical mental health field. Accessibly written, the interdisciplinary nature of the text should also make this book fascinating reading for students and academics interested in critical psychology, post-colonial studies, mental health and education alike.