You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This handsome and impressive textbook, intended for undergraduate students, arrives at a time when the reviewer has been appraising a number of similar publications with an eye to selecting a text for several of his college courses in psychology.
Psychoanalysts or analytically-oriented psychologists who have taught courses in general psychology will appreciate the importance of providing students with an 'overview' of the entire field of modern psychology and of its historical background, while chafing nevertheless at the restrictions imposed by the average text. When some of the students are potential 'majors' in psychology, a reasonable amount of reading (and thought) may be expected of them. But when the students are taking a course or two in psychology for 'cultural' reasons (i.e., to meet academic requirements for a degree) and when their first course in psychology is also their 'terminal' one, the professorial dilemma is sharpened and even the selection of a text becomes difficult.
Until recently, this reviewer has avoided the use of formal textbooks, preferring instead one of the several anthologies which make original and significant papers available to those students (the majority) who have not yet developed the habit of reading psychological journals in libraries. Although the mechanical eclecticism and spoon-feeding which are characteristic of the average textbook may thus be avoided, the work of the course falls entirely on the teacher; and he will probably have to labor harder (and learn more) than if he were assigning so many yards of reading each week from a text. Worse, there is even the greater danger of riding one's own hobbies and failing to provide the 'overview' and perspective which beginning students should properly receive.
The recent volume by Krech and Crutchfield is superior in many respects to several of the books which have become standard texts in introductory psychology. It surveys every aspect of academic psychology in a pleasant