90 results for "Psychology"

On being human

Fromm, Erich
Anyone attempting to identify the thread that runs through the writings of the late Erich Fromm (1900-1980) will soon discover an unequivocally humanistic worldview. This was Fromm's guiding principle. From the 1930s on it signified his break with the Institute for Social Research, and marked his disputes with Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno. Fromm himself frequently refers in his writings to the humanistic aspect of man: humanistic science, humanistic socialism, humanistic religion, humanistic psychoanalysis. This posthumous volume includes writings from one of Fromm's most fertile periods, the 1960s, during the last twenty years of his life. They are based on lectures, works written for specific occasions, and manuscripts intended as books. Of special interest is the extended essay on two very difficult thinkers, Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx.
Continuum 1994 180 pages

The Betrayal of the Self The Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women

Arno Gruen
Love or power ? these are the opposing poles of a choice every child is compelled to make, very early in its life, in a drama that sets it irrevocably on its path through life. This startling new insight into a formative experience fundamental to our development is the subject of THE BETRAYAL OF THE SELF, Dr. Arno Gruen's passionately argued contribution to the psychoanalytic view of the human soul, and what distorts it into pathology. What happens to an infant when it learns that the love it craves from its parents is available only at the price of submission to their will? In paying this price, as Dr. Gruen found in many years of experience with his patients, the infant renounces its true, autonomous self and instead embarks on a search for power with which to manipulate the world around it-a quest that will henceforth rule its life. Dr. Gruen maps out the process by which this striving for power, once the fatal choice has been made, masks the child's inner emptiness, dulls its fears, and soothes its secret feelings of self-loathing. Its need for power soon bars all access to its real emotions, and corrupts all of its relationships into ones based on mastery and domination. The power-oriented world around it, which puts a premium on stoic "strength" and "invulnerability," further confirms the child in this pursuit of power, leading it on to a path of dehumanization which pervades our entire society. Thus human destructiveness and evil are not innate, but develop in a complex process of growth marked by the failure to attain autonomy. In contrast, Dr. Gruen defines autonomy as that state of integration in which we live in full harmony with our feelings and needs. It is a natural state of being experienced in early childhood when the infant is loved unconditionally and without the need to earn this love by the self-sacrifice of submission. It allows the child to remain vulnerable to feelings of self-doubt, helplessness, pain, and rage ? the very emotions the infant fearfully flees in its decision to betray its own self. The fear of these emotions, Dr. Gruen shows, alienates the male in particular, destroying his soul, depriving him of his ability to love, and imposing on him the need to oppress others, women especially. How can therapy help the patient to find the way back to health and his autonomous self? Dr. Gruen discovered the clue to the therapeutic process in the active role the patient originally played in his choice between love and power, when he took refuge in power in his flight from pain. The therapist's task in helping the patient is to teach him how to accept the vulnerability he once feared in order to recover his lost autonomy. By defining man's vulnerability as his strength, Dr. Gruen points the way to a psychoanalysis of personal courage and social responsibility. At the same time, by exposing the childhood split which leads man to abandon his true self, Gruen has written a powerful indictment of our modern culture which mirrors the individual's self-alienation in growing social violence and loss of humanity. DR. ARNO GRUEN, who was born in Germany, emigrated to the U.S. as a child in 1936. He received his psychoanalytic training at New York University, and held many teaching posts in the United States, including seventeen years as professor of psychology at Rutgers University. Since 1979 he has lived and practiced in Switzerland. He is the author of many books and papers in both German and English. His other major work available in English is his 1992 book, THE INSANITY OF NORMALITY: TOWARD UNDERSTANDING HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS (republished in 2007 by Human Development Books).
Human Development Books 2007 180 pages

New World New Mind

Robert Ornstein,Paul Ehrlich
Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich explain that we are causing our own problems because we have created a world where our basic mental functions are no longer suitable. We evolved over a period of millions of years to survive in small tribal families on the wild grassy plains of East Africa. Now the way we live has nothing to do with that time and place, but the mental tools that were developed to survive on the savanna have remained unchanged. These instincts were wonderfully adapted to the environment that shaped them. But that world, the world that made us, is gone. Now these same instincts are causing us to destroy the world that we made. The threats we face are of our own making, and we can unmake them. If people learn how we have come to this point, we can restore our hope for the future. New World New Mind describes the way our minds have evolved, and offers suggestions for how to cope with who we are in the world we live in now. Recent decades have seen remarkable progress in many areas. For example, despite the abject suffering of millions of people, it is nonetheless true that there has been unprecedented alleviation of poverty and disease for the world's poorest people. There are so many promising and astonishing advances in medicine, technology, and the social and physical sciences that if we give ourselves a chance to survive, our species could enter a golden age.
Malor Books 2020-09 320 pages

Fascists: a social psychological view of the National Front

Billig, Michael
The growth of the National Front into a political party has shown that fascism is alive and kicking in Britain, and no longer confined to a tiny lunatic fringe.This book examines in detail the official propaganda of the National Front and this, together with an analysis of its basic ideology and interviews with ordinary members, demonstrates a clear historical continuity with Nazism and the survival of the anti-Semitic belief in a world Jewish conspiracy.The idea of a Nazi revival here in Britain is of frightening importance and this book should be read by all those with an interest in the threat posed by contemporary fascism.
Academic Press in co-operation with European Association of Experimental Social Psychology 1978 393 pages

The triumph of the therapeutic: uses of faith after Freud

Rieff, Philip
"Philip Rieff has become out most learned and provocative critic of psychoanalytic thinking and of the compelling mind and character of its first proponent. Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist remains the sharpest exegesis yet to be done on the moral and intellectual implications of Freud's work. It was a critical masterpiece, worthy of the man who inspired it; and it is now followed by a work that suffers not at all in comparison. No review can do justice to the richness of The Triumph of the Therapeutic."-Robert Coles, New York Times Book Review "A triumphantly successful exploration of certain key themes in cultural life. Rieff's incidental remarks are not only illuminating in themselves; they suggest whole new areas of inquiry."-Alasdair MacIntyre, Guardian
Penguin 1973 237 pages

Psychology and Social Sanity

Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916) was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial / Organizational (I/O), legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. He encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War. Torn between his loyalty to America and his homeland, he often defended Germany's actions, attracting criticism. He believed that mental illness had a psychological basis and made diagnoses based on behavioral observations, an interview and answers received by the patients whom he interviewed. These studies led him to publish the book, Psychotherapy (1909). In 1908, he published his controversial book, On the Witness Stand (1908), which talked about psychological factors that can affect a trial's outcome. In 1913, he wrote the book Psychology and Industrial Efficiency which looked at problems with monotony, attention and fatigue, physical and social influences on the working power, the effects of advertising and the future development of economic psychology. His other works include: Psychology and Social Sanity (1914), The War and America (1914) and The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916).
Dodo Press 2008-04 156 pages

The Marxist Theory of Alienation

Ernest Mandel,George Novack
"Is alienation, or estrangement from one's fellow human beings, an innate and inevitable condition of human existence? The authors of this book say no. They explain that alienation is rooted in the development of class society itself, in the alienation of labor under all systems of private property from slavery to capitalism, where the products of the hands and minds of the vast majority are taken from them and controlled by the propertied class. Mandel and Novack argue that alienation can be overcome through the revolutionary fight for a society both free of domination by the capitalist class, and with complete democratic control of the government and economy by working people" -- Back cover.
Pathfinder Press 1973 102 pages

Human groups and social categories: studies in social psychology

Tajfel, Henri
First published in 1981, this volume presents studies on the social psychology of the relations and conflicts between social groups. Henri Tajfel played a central role in the development of social psychology in Europe, both in his own research and in his sponsorship of other European research. He has been particularly influential through his publications on various aspects of inter-group behaviour and a good deal of what he has written remains dispersed in a large number of different publications. This book presents a synthesis of some of this work, edited and structured to demonstrate its continuity and its cumulative importance. The book will be indispensable for social psychologists and should interest a wide range of political and social scientists.
Cambridge University Press 1981-04-23 369 pages

Resolving social conflicts: &, Field theory in social science

Lewin, Kurt
Because of the pervasiveness of K. Lewin's intellectual contributions to contemporary social psychology, 2 volumes of his collected writings, "Resolving Social Conflicts," and "Field Theory in Social Science," are being reissued in this] one comprehensive volume. The reissuing as a single volume is being done in part because, as D. Cartwright wrote in his Preface, both volumes are integrally related parts of Lewin's work. In "Resolving Social Conflicts," Lewin's writings reflect the applied psychologist—his practical interests in the nature and causes of social conflicts and his search for techniques in preventing and resolving them. In "Field Theory in Social Science," his concerns are those of the social scientist and the conceptual and methodological tools for understanding the individual and society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
American Psychological Association 1997 422 pages

Mental Illness in the Community The Pathway to Psychiatric Care

Prof David Goldberg,David Goldberg,Peter Huxley
Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1980 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
Taylor & Francis Group 2011-11-24 204 pages