1st Edition

Psychologists on Psychology (Classic Edition)

By David Cohen Copyright 2015
312 Pages
by Routledge

312 Pages
by Routledge

312 Pages
by Routledge

This is a Classic Edition of David Cohen’s unique collection of interviews with eminent psychologists, first published in 1977. The book presents conversations with thirteen of the world’s great psychologists, who dominated the subject from 1950 to 1980, and who shaped psychology as we know it today. Those interviewed include Burrhus Skinner, Donald Broadbent, Hans Eysenck and also R.D Laing,... Read more
Introduction to the Classic Edition  Original Introduction  1. David McClelland 2. Donald Broadbent  3. Noam Chomsky  4. H.J. Eysenck  5. Leon Festinger  6. Liam Hudson  7. Michel Jouvet  8. R.D. Laing  9. Leupold-Löwenthal  10. Neal Miller  11. Burrhus Skinner  12. Henri Tajfel  13. Niko Tinbergen  14. Tentative Conclusions

Biography

David Cohen is a prolific writer and film-maker, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He trained as a psychologist and set up Psychology News as a magazine which has since become a film and TV production company.

'This reissue of Cohen’s classic 1976 collection of interviews is welcome, timely and useful on several counts. It actually raises serious theoretical questions about how far Psychology has travelled – if at all – over the past four decades. Were the topics being so heatedly contested ever really resolved? Have we come any closer to the genuine profundity which it is surely the discipline’s deeper aspiration to provide – and which one indeed sometimes finds in the allegedly defunct grand theories of the 70s? Cohen’s new Introduction is an entertaining, insightful, and in parts quite critical, retrospective of developments since then. While demographically dated – no women, non-whites or gays among the interviewees – there is also a passion and ambition about the contributors which would nowadays be hard to find. I heartily recommend this highly readable and accessible collection to all psychology students especially, as well as the profession in general. In its overview of what psychology was it enables the reader to see more clearly what it has become. Whether the picture is a cause for lament or delight I leave to the reader!' - Graham Richards, Professor Emeritus of History of Psychology, Staffordshire University, UK