The Psychology Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Contents
INTRODUCTION
The four temperaments of personality Galen
There is a reasoning soul in this machine Descartes
Dormez! Abbé Faria
Concepts become forces when they resist one another Johann Friedrich Herbart
Be that self which one truly is Søren Kierkegaard
Personality is composed of nature and nurture Francis Galton
The laws of hysteria are universal Jean-Martin Charcot
A peculiar destruction of the internal connections of the psyche Emil Kraepelin
The beginnings of the mental life date from the beginnings of life Wilhelm Wundt
We know the meaning of “consciousness” so long as no one asks us to define it William James
Adolescence is a new birth G. Stanley Hall
24 hours after learning something, we forget two-thirds of it Hermann Ebbinghaus
The intelligence of an individual is not a fixed quantity Alfred Binet
The unconscious sees the men behind the curtains Pierre Janet
The sight of tasty food makes a hungry man’s mouth water Ivan Pavlov
Profitless acts are stamped out Edward Thorndike
Anyone, regardless of their nature, can be trained to be anything John B. Watson
That great God-given maze which is our human world Edward Tolman
Once a rat has visited our grain sack we can plan on its return Edwin Guthrie
Nothing is more natural than for the cat to “love” the rat Zing-Yang Kuo
Learning is just not possible Karl Lashley
Imprinting cannot be forgotten! Konrad Lorenz
Behavior is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement B.F. Skinner
Stop imagining the scene and relax Joseph Wolpe
The unconscious is the true psychical reality Sigmund Freud
The neurotic carries a feeling of inferiority with him constantly Alfred Adler
The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes Carl Jung
The struggle between the life and death instincts persists throughout life Melanie Klein
The tyranny of the “shoulds” Karen Horney
The superego becomes clear only when it confronts the ego with hostility Anna Freud
Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself Fritz Perls
It is notoriously inadequate to take an adopted child into one’s home and love him Donald Winnicott
The unconscious is the discourse of the Other Jacques Lacan
Man’s main task is to give birth to himself Erich Fromm
The good life is a process not a state of being Carl Rogers
What a man can be, he must be Abraham Maslow
Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning Viktor Frankl
One does not become fully human painlessly Rollo May
Rational beliefs create healthy emotional consequences Albert Ellis
The family is the “factory” where people are made Virginia Satir
Turn on, tune in, drop out Timothy Leary
Insight may cause blindness Paul Watzlawick
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through R.D. Laing
Our history does not determine our destiny Boris Cyrulnik
Only good people get depressed Dorothy Rowe
Fathers are subject to a rule of silence Guy Corneau
Instinct is a dynamic pattern Wolfgang Köhler
Interruption of a task greatly improves its chances of being remembered Bluma Zeigarnik
When a baby hears footsteps, an assembly is excited Donald Hebb
Knowing is a process not a product Jerome Bruner
The magical number 7, plus or minus 2 George Armitage Miller
There’s more to the surface than meets the eye Aaron Beck
We can listen to only one voice at once Donald Broadbent
Time’s arrow is bent into a loop Endel Tulving
Perception is externally guided hallucination Roger N. Shepard
A man with conviction is a hard man to change Leon Festinger
We are constantly on the lookout for causal connections Daniel Kahneman
Events and emotion are stored in memory together Gordon H. Bower
Emotions are a runaway train Paul Ekman
Ecstasy is a step into an alternative reality Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Happy people are extremely social Martin Seligman
What we believe with all our hearts is not necessarily the truth Elizabeth Loftus
The seven sins of memory Daniel Schacter
One is not one’s thoughts Jon Kabat-Zinn
The fear is that biology will debunk all that we hold sacred Steven Pinker
Compulsive behavior rituals are attempts to control intrusive thoughts Paul Salkovskis
You cannot understand a system until you try to change it Kurt Lewin
How strong is the urge toward social conformity? Solomon Asch
Life is a dramatically enacted thing Erving Goffman
The more you see it, the more you like it Robert Zajonc
Who likes competent women? Janet Taylor Spence
Flashbulb memories are fired by events of high emotionality Roger Brown
The goal is not to advance knowledge, but to be in the know Serge Moscovici
We are, by nature, social beings William Glasser
We believe people get what they deserve Melvin Lerner
People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy Elliot Aronson
People do what they are told to do Stanley Milgram
What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Philip Zimbardo
Trauma must be understood in terms of the relationship between the individual and society Ignacio Martín-Baró
The goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things Jean Piaget
We become ourselves through others Lev Vygotsky
A child is not beholden to any particular parent Bruno Bettelheim
Anything that grows has a ground plan Erik Erikson
Early emotional bonds are an integral part of human nature John Bowlby
Contact comfort is overwhelmingly important Harry Harlow
We prepare children for a life about whose course we know nothing Françoise Dolto
A sensitive mother creates a secure attachment Mary Ainsworth
Who teaches a child to hate and fear a member of another race? Kenneth Clark
Girls get better grades than boys Eleanor E. Maccoby
Most human behavior is learned through modeling Albert Bandura
Morality develops in six stages Lawrence Kohlberg
The language organ grows like any other body organ Noam Chomsky
Autism is an extreme form of the male brain Simon Baron-Cohen
Name as many uses as you can think of for a toothpick J.P. Guilford
Did Robinson Crusoe lack personality traits before the advent of Friday? Gordon Allport
General intelligence consists of both fluid and crystallized intelligence Raymond Cattell
There is an association between insanity and genius Hans J. Eysenck
Three key motivations drive performance David C. McClelland
Emotion is an essentially unconscious process Nico Frijda
Behavior without environmental cues would be absurdly chaotic Walter Mischel
We cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals David Rosenhan
The three faces of Eve Thigpen & Cleckley
DIRECTORY
GLOSSARY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS