5 comments about A Mind at a Time.

1. This book clearly defines how different minds learn and process the vast amounts of information encountered on a daily basis in school and in everyday life. The author is clearly at the top of his field and can very easily communicate his findings in a way that is easy to comprehend, extremely informative and interesting to read.



2. Thank you Dr. Levine for this instruction manual about the mind!!! I have read this book several times already and learn something new each time I read it. I continue to use it as a reference for when I am stumped about either my own behavior or a child's behavior.



3. Dr. Levine's book, A Mind at a Time, is so comprehensive that it is challenging to pare it down to a few essential ideas. He begins by telling the reader why he is "a pediatrician with a mission". He endeavors to accurately describe the struggles of unsuccessful children, to explain the brain's working and dysfunctions which we all experience and see in others, and to provide a "road map" for parents and teachers to knowledgeably observe their children's cognitive development. This observation by a trained eye allows for early detection of breakdowns in learning as well as necessary identification of a child's cognitive strengths, overall assets, and consuming passions. Interestingly, research into problematic learning is also a study of all learning, and how the brain is supposed to function. Only when we are equipped with accurate information regarding a child's diverse kind of mind can we begin to explain why they are struggling and how they can best conquer or compensate for these challenges. It is vital that this knowledge be openly shared with young developing minds so that they know from the start that they are not what they feared, but rather free to grow stronger given the knowledge and help they need to succeed.
   
   Dr. Levine's text covers an overview of the ways of learning, and how lifestyle choices can help or hurt an individual's learning styles. He then goes on to detail the eight neurodevelopmental systems, chapter by chapter: the Attention Control System, the Memory System, the Language System, the Spatial Ordering System, the Sequential Ordering System, the Motor System, the Higher Thinking System, and the Social Thinking System. These systems develop at diverse paces, but must be utilized to grow strong and to stay strong. Although complex and detailed, this book is written in terms a layperson can understand with some thoughtful reading and perhaps a little rereading.
   
   Chapter 10 is devoted to helping the educator or parent pinpoint the areas of breakdown based on evidence from past productivity, behaviors, and learning difficulties. Dr. Levine has divided these areas of breakdown into particular profiles based upon recurring patterns that occur with particular types of brain wiring. He explains each profile, giving case studies to better illustrate what may be typical of each profile. He also details different emotional mindsets that can interfere with a child's achieving his or her potential, and provides strategies to overcome those negative behaviors. Finally, he addresses the benefits and possible detriment of testing, and the outcomes in adulthood.
   
   Dr. Levine adds several additional chapters to provide even more tools for working with different kinds of minds. He discusses the management of a profile, which is broken down into stages: demystification, accommodations, interventions at the breakdown points, strengthening strengths and affinities, protection from humiliation, and using professional therapies. He devotes a whole chapter to provide parents with best methods for nurturing these children at home. He also devotes a chapter to the teacher's role and what types of policies are practiced in "a humane school".
   
   I especially appreciate Dr. Levine's kind heart, which is evident throughout this book. He encourages parents and educators who know a child with a brain that is not meeting necessary demands not to give up on that child, and don't allow them to give up on themselves either. He reminds us that our minds are not stagnant, but come into their own with time. School is the hardest thing that many of these kids are ever going to have to face, because it focuses so intensely on particular skills, such as math and language, while devaluing other important skills, such as interpersonal abilities and creativity. He also reminds us that report cards are notoriously poor predictors of a child's potential. Throughout the numerous case studies, Dr. Levine is an encourager, an empowering force, the voice of hope and predictor of success. His position, experience, and knowledge of current research lend weight to his optimistic determination. Later, at the end of each chapter detailing the neurodevelopmental systems, Dr. Levine lists strategies, a tool box of helpful, practical information to help students, their teachers, and their parents in ways that are immediate and useful. He considers these children to be heroes and heroines, distinctively different in their learning styles, but valiantly courageous in their ability to cope, their resilience, and their will to overcome.
   
   Dr. Levine has covered his topic completely, with every avenue of possibility addressed appropriately and in the most humble, helpful manner. I have worked with a developmental pediatrician who trained under Dr. Levine, and I can say without any hesitation, if I was younger, I would jump at the chance to train under Dr. Levine myself.



4. In this book you realize that there is really no such thing as dumb, that all brains work differently. It helps focus on the REAL issues of learning, instead of lumping your understanding into ADHD or some other category. You should read it!



5. Dr. Mel Levine has worked for a long time with children so that they could grow up feeling responsible, successful and with good self esteem. He has spent a great deal of time working with experts in many disciplines in order to understand how children learn and how to help them if they are struggling.
   
   He has broken learning into several areas of input, processing, storage, retrieval and output. Parents and educators can use this information to understand where a child may be having problems and then use ideas from his book to help turn things around for the child/student.
   
   What the book does let us know is that learning is not easy but more like rocket science, in that it is a combination of innate abilities and deficits of the child, and the abilities of the adults to work with the abilities and help remediate the deficits through a combination of interventions and accommodations. There is also no quick turn around, since the educational demands change over time with new areas of difficulty recognized with the increased demands.

4 comments about Human Behavior in the Social Environment: A Multidimensional Perspective (with InfoTrac®).

1. I'm in a MSW program and this text book was part of the reading material. For a text book, its poorly written. The book jumps from topic to topic and does not have a clear flow from one subject to anouther. Items are misplaced and the information is difficult to find. In my class of 25 student there was no one who was happy with this book.



2. I'm a first-semester MSW student. I don't have a background in social work or the social sciences, so I may be way off when I say that this is the most informative textbook that I've ever read. (Mind you, I'd stil rather be reading something by Howard Zinn or Jared Diamind.) Every page teaches me something new. If it has organizational problems, I haven't noticed, because reading it is so engrossing.



3. This is a great book on humnan development. I have not finished it but so far for my class it is one of the best that I have seen and my undergraduate courses were in Human Development. I really like this book and the information in it.



4. I had the misfortune of having to read this book in a Human Development course. This textbook is wordy, redundant, and overflowing with irrelevant detail. The writing is incomprehensible. There is a crippling lack of focus which defeats the purpose of any text--to guide a student through relevant material. A good editor would have rejected this book outright, or at least have gotten out a big pack of red pens!

5 comments about Understanding By Design.

1. I used this book as part of a graduate level class. The book is quite informative and gives great ideas on how to teach for results instead of just covering necessary material. Basically, it tells teachers to start with goals, then work backward to the introduction and teaching of the material. There are other similar strategies out there, but this is very specific as to curriculum design. It gets repetitive, but it is useful overall.



2. I bought this book because I needed to learn about UbD's for my new district this year. I thought that the book was well laid out and gave you a great framework for the UbD's but there was so much flab in between. There were a lot of pages that I felt like I could skip through. I do not know if that is because I graduated with an Education degree and therefore I knew most of the things they said in this book or if it because it repeats itself a lot. Overall I think this book is great for college students just starting in the profession.



3. The book is excellent in its comprehensive scope of unit design. The size of the book is awkward but easy for making copies. The writing of the book is at times hard to read. Perhaps it's a bit too comprehensive in its scope and evaluation of unit design.



4. I've used this book for three years in my graduate Curriculum Design courses for teachers. My students are practicing teachers who have seen dozens of lesson planning approaches and don't need some new theory just for the fun of it. But Wiggins and McTighe present a fresh perspective that doesn't so much replace as reposition traditional approaches. It boils down to what they call backward design--or identifying learning outcomes and assessments before addressing fun activities or how to meet state standards. This means the fun activities, state standards, and building or district level lesson plan formats all work with their system--they just remind us all to figure out the purpose of a lesson before committing the "twin sins" of merely entertaining the students or covering the material.



5. This book is part of required reading for a class I am taking. So far, I've read about 3-4 chapters and the best part of this book is that the concepts it introduces can be applied right away. It's not a how-to type book - it really does force you to think about your own curriculum & content, but it does help with structure & organization of content. It's also useful if you have a difficult time "getting started" on framing out class material.

3 comments about Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences.

1. Media-disseminated messages flood our every waking second, affecting us in ways we often do not readily discern. Croteau and Hoynes take the reader on an exploration of these media forces in a sociological journey that walks then leaps from the birth of printed words for the masses to cyberspace for the individual. In the process, we learn a lot along the way. Not only about media, but, about ourselves. Unlike most college course texts in Media and Society (in sociology or journalism), "Media Society" is written in understandable English and is not ruefully Marxian in ideological slant. The work plays it straight down the middle. The authors' goal, to which they succeed, is to provide information that shows the complexity of social relationships in, around and through which information from all sources is sought and internalized by "receivers" then, through feedback, subtly affects the "senders" and subsequent messages as well. Surprisingly up-to-date in information, especially concerning the so-called New Media (a synthesis of current technologies, traditional entertainment programs-turned-political,and old news media). Croteau and Hoynes not only introduce the reader to the media mileau in society, they show how economics drive news coverage. At the same time they explain that media consolidations have not shrunk the markets as first feared, but have actually led--perhaps inadvertently--to an explosion of different, often smaller and more intimate media. The media pie, they attest, is growing bigger as the number of slices inexplicably increase. In later chapters, the authors do a commendable job acquainting the reader with communications theory, especially explaining how opinions are formed. My favorite chapter, given my predilections, are the chapters dealing with media and the political world (and the rest of the chapters in Part 4). The authors also enter the globalization fray by demonstrating not only how American pop culture is transforming traditional cultures (see Barber's McWorld v. Jihad for greater detail), but also how traditional cultures are influencing American pop culture in ways greater than we had intuited. Anyone interested in gaining a sense of how media is impacting his or her daily life and how we, as social beings, react to that impact, should certainly read this wonderful book.



2. Complete moral degredation of society, eh? Dimwit zealots interspersed with egotistical invaders of privacy and the silly immature masses of disgusting protoplasm seeking fun at others' expense, all trapped in the tragic duplicity and hypocrisy of their own self-glorified beliefs...the self-proclaimed intellectual class, the so-called saviors of modern society? Has the rabid journalistic and entertainment and advertising (aka the modern day devils) media gone berserk with no one around to save them from their mental illness except maybe their own slow but inevitable slide down into oblivion?



3. Unquestionably, the strength and courage shown by the modern day media has been the sole driving force in bringing forward the various viewpoints that would eventually change the world for better. It is like the words - "It sometimes takes a stranger for us to be able to look into justices' beautiful eyes". That is true at so many levels, both at an individual and personal level but also in terms of the relationship between the citizens of this world and the media. And therein lies the genesis of everlasting love as well, no matter how much doubt is cast by slander. However human nature is strange in that one often ends up hurting the most those that they actually love dearly. Words, in that context, are also strange since they can be sometimes be so vitriolic, if not being utterly cruel. There once was an ordinary man who sat in his home looking at his television screen, as if looking through it and asked for forgiveness and hoped that one day he would be forgiven by everyone he hurt. It was at times like this that he wished he could get himself to walk away from the television and return to his ordinary world of man and machines or even to his essence, not out of fear of retaliation but out of the pain he kept causing others. After all he was just a human being! He was such a person who could see the truth in every perspective and ideology and at the same time felt that the modern world would be writing its epitaph if it did not bravely face the reality of the every changing world. It was something as simple and pure as seeing the truth in the different ways of life chosen by different human beings who lived on this land even if he did not agree with all viewpoints. It is like being able to walk in every stranger's shoes and realizing that in essence some face of the ultimate truth shows itself no matter how different this truth looks at face value. It is analogous to the different faces of a diamond and that it would take a miracle to be able to see these myriad, if not infinite, faces of the same diamond in one glimpse. In this regard, the narrower the tunnel vision, the more mistrust there is against other viewpoints. That is the essence of life. Well, what can you say other than - "shine on you crazy diamond..."

5 comments about The Skilled Helper: A Problem Management and Opportunity Development Approach to Helping.

1. Simply the best book in learning ways to help people; based on Carl Rogers and Carkhuff teaching.



2. While I'm learning and practicing the helping profession, and reading the book, the content just coincides with my progress concurrently, from active listening, to probing, then challenging. With vivid examples, dialogues, readers can grasp the theory and idea in a very solid way and in my actual sessions working with my clients. The content is comprehensive and I believe it has already become a bible in the Helping Field.
   
   Last of all, the condition of the book delivered by Amazon is excellent and I appreciate the service.



3. This book is wonderful. It was assigned reading for a course I voluntarily took to improve my professional consulting skills. The book is full of valuable information that is easy to read yet full of depth. With some practice I have made this a regular part of my life, and my relationships both personally and professionaly have improved for it. I think everyone should read this book!



4. I'm reading this for class. It's well-written and an easy read, and helpful for brief psychotherapy. Very practical and solution-focused.



5. Very practical and good at teaching basic skills in helping. Good for therapy based professions.

5 comments about Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.

1. Mintz carefully places implications that sugar has caused human nature and culture to change and the end of his work, after a brief overview of all that we have been doing with sugar or rather sugar has been doing with us for the past 1000 years. MintzÕs work is divided into 5 sections: Food, Sociality and Sugar; Production; Consumption; Power; and finally Eating and Being. Mintz really hopes to build a base of facts to reveal to us how we as a people have identified with and sought to consume sugar over the past 1000 years and how that has affected us.

   Sugar is always a labor intensive project, from the mill, to the distillery, to the storehouse and all the laborers it takes to run these places. Mintz discusses how this need for labor caused the British to look to Africa and other places to find cheap or free labor. With sugar came slavery, and those slaves who did the plantation work generally worked in the Caribbean while the product they created was delivered to British aristocracy.

   In the mid-1700Õs sugar is made cheaper and more accessible to the lower classes and at this point shifts in its purpose to sweeten food. And as outlined by the upper statistics, sugar only continues to grow in demand. It is interesting that because sugar started as something precious and hard to come by, when it later became more cheap and accessible to the working class it still seemed to uphold that Òrareness.Ó The working class felt like they were increasing in freedom and status as they started to consume sugar. Sugar and like products Òrepresented the growing freedom of ordinary folks,Ó yet did Sugar really mean freedom?

   In analysis of MintzÕs thesis I am most convinced that sugar is a powerful force that has moved us historically and today. Sugar production has not only caused the physical relocation, its consumption has caused us to form class and psychological identity around it; today we still live with the power of sweetness in our everyday life, most of the time not giving it a second thought.
   Sugar took slaves from Africa to the new world in America. It created identity in the aristocracy and later a manufactured sense of freedom among the working class. Today it continues to grow in its use across the world and has become an everyday commodity. The more fast paced life becomes in the 21st century, the more consumers are drawn to pre-prepared processed foods consistently with high contents of sugar. Sucrose production separated African families in the 1700s, brought class distinction to EuropeÕs families during its shift to capitalism, and now it severs families from eating together at the dinner table with its processed and fast foods. With these implications either we allow sugar to keep moving us, or we move it off the table, out of the cupboard and dump it into Boston Harbor.




2. Sidney W. Mintz's Sweetness and Power situates economic analysis in consumption rather than production. The author believes that a producer's labor and exploitation is not enough to understand the exploitation of production. One must unpack the mythos of demand. Central to this is the idea that rational choice leads liberal individuals to consume products because it is in their best interest. Mintz correctly implies that in the historiography of western consumers and colonial producers, this liberal individual is almost always white, male, and couched in the trappings of "civilization." He criticizes prevailing practices in social anthropology that approach colonized peoples as pristine and discrete, a tendency that also has troubling sway over what he terms "anthropology of modern life." He sees the anthropology rooted in his study of a basic commodity-sugar-as a positive contestation of the bounded primitive as a mode of inquiry and one that connects rather than marginalizes its subjects.
   
   Mintz's engagement with cultural anthropology is based on a sophisticated premise: the way in which canonical anthropology marginalizes the primitive in opposition to civil society is related to the way in which liberal economics marginalizes the producer in opposition to the liberal individual consumer. The term "in opposition to" is appropriate because in this marginalization, both ends are mutually decentered. Both the primitive and the civil as well as production and consumption are on the margins because there is a labor, an exploitation, and an invocation to behavior that defies logic on each end. This, Mintz implies, necessitates a rejection of the prevailing colonial narrative of one-way dominion. For him, the mass-consumption of sugar is an anthropological anomaly. This is the puzzle that leads him to root his study in England from roughly 1650 thru 1900, during which time sugar went from being a lavish luxury to a staple of working class diets. As he notes, there is ample anthropological precedent to model culture and society as resistant to change and resistant to the imposition of new practice and tradition, even amidst a changing milieu that raises contradictions. Thus, contrary to liberal economic theory, demand is not a matter of nature in which rational persons severed from cultural meaning rush toward rational hedonistic consumption with open arms. Indeed, anthropology suggests that nature resists this imposition of change. Because of this, demand must be a structural phenomenon. It must at some juncture interrupt and structure culture in a way that is alien to its natural progression. The author concludes that production must create cultural meaning.
   
   Understanding demand as structure and not nature allows there to be a liminal space between production and consumption. For Mintz, sugar inscribes a genealogy of contact upon this space. He sees the global connectedness of commodity as a new shape in which to group peoples in the study of kinship, religion and other cultural phenomena. In revealing how sugar came to England as science, theology, morality and a bedfellow (or perhaps even a progenitor) of the Enlightenment and other significant social shifts, the author hopes to springboard similar scholarship in cultural studies. The text concludes that the massive success of sugar in imposing a sort of consumptive hegemony in places like England and the United States, while not as significantly restructuring cultural practices in places like France and China, presents fertile ground for future research. If it has a shortfalling, it is the absence of a more explicit centering of power-this is to say that in focusing on the mutual marginalization of production and consumption there is a lack of coherence when it comes to narrating a driving force behind it all. Nonetheless the author makes significant contributions to cultural studies and interdisciplinary scholarship as well as hinting at the potential for deploying commodity as a postnational and contra-national discourse.



3. Mintz provides a fascinating history of sugar, placing it in context within the transatlantic world. Sugar acquired ever increasing importance as the means for its production improved, its availability spread and its price decreased. Underpinning the success of sugar was the tragedy of slavery. Not only did slaves serve the sugar plantations and mills, but Mintz makes a compelling case for sugar's being the single key force behind the firm establishment of black slavery in the western hemisphere.



4. Sidney Mintz is a worldly and humane scholar whose
   investigation of the role of sugar in the development
   of the modern world turns out to be three seperate books.
   
   The first, and most understandable might be called the
   History of Sugar Consumption. This is his story of the
   meaning attached to sweetness in the western world and how
   that meaning changed as sugar became more widely available.
   
   The second, could be called the Power of Sweetness. It is
   his unravelling of the close connection between sugar
   consumption and the Industrial Era. In this 'book' he credits
   the primate love of sweetness, the high caloric yield of
   sugar and the lowering prices that efficient production
   created with establishing sugar's central place at our tables.
   
   The third book is an attempt to relate sugar to questions of
   imperial and class ambitions, power politics and economic
   issues. For this reader, at least, these questions seem to
   ride along on the coattails of the innate appeal of sugar
   as a food, especially in places where wine is expensive and
   stimulant drinks prevalent. In short, the arguement of this
   third book seems like an attempt to turn the second book on
   its head.
   
   Now, I'm told that anthropologists these days like to talk
   that way, that they prefer to believe in the power of
   institutions rather than the appeal of things. Interesting,
   and I think for many ordinary readers, incomprehensible.
   
   None the less, if you leave the occasional theoretical
   oddity aside, this is a wonderfully put together story,
   provocatively told.
   
   --Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
   the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
   9781601640005



5. Someone scribbled the following on the first page of the introduction of my copy of this book: "NOTE: this work may be of marginal use!!" I disagree.
   
   Sugar is such a heavily-used part of most diets, yet we rarely stop to reflect how it came to be that way. Our dependence on sugar is surely not healthy, yet it is incredibly hard to wean oneself from sugaring so much of what we eat. I found Mintz's discussion on the history of the production and consumption patterns of sugar to be interesting, and the repercussions to our social structures to be even more so. This is still a timely read given the current reflection on the nature of world markets.

5 comments about Behavior Modification: What It Is And How To Do It (8th Edition).

1. I found this book to be written in a way that is very easy to comprehend, and expresses the ideas clearly. The chapters are short and concise. This book is a great tool to use not only for classes, but to refer to in the future.



2. This book is a great tool for any professional who works with children or adults using behavioral techniques. The methods are explained clearly with examples for application purposes. Anyone from a parent to a clinic director can benefit from this thorough and well written 'manual' for Behavior Modification.



3. I think it is very difficult to follow. I think it uses too many acronyms.



4. This is a very detailed book about behavior modification. It literally traces the history of behavioral modification from its origins and progresses into actual techniques that can be used in a variety of setting. Some of the chapters are quite dense, yet interesting. There is a comprehensive summary and the authors do a wonderful job with breaking down large units of information into readable points. There is a useful guide for functional analysis provided. The behavior contract is generic, but a decent basis for a individualized one. Finally, many behavioral methods are explained in simple terms and there are numerous examples that illustrate their usefulness.



5. There is a ton of usable information in this book. The problem is getting past the jargon and text book manner in which it is written. It really is more for university students than the lay person. Keep in mind that it is a text book for 2 consecutive psychology semesters. So, if the answers do not jump out at you, then do not get frustrated. I have read it through a few times and still do not grasp some of it. If you have the patience to apply something as simple as the operant conditioning, you can actually make a habit within a month. For instance, I used to reward myself with 15 minutes of fiction reading for every chapter of biology that I read. Result? I went from a D to a B within a couple of months. I have helped some of my clients do the same procedure with quitting smoking and sticking with fitness plans. This book is one of the few university text books that I kept after my degree.
   
   Doug Setter, Bachelor of Human Ecology, author of Stomach Flattening and One Less Victim

5 comments about Cognition.

1. I took Dr. Matlin's Cognitive Psychology class last semester at SUNY Geneseo, and we used this book. It is excellent! Its style is very readable but the material is not watered down. The language makes the material very easy to understand. As I read it, I could almost hear her speaking! The examples are very useful in demonstrating the concepts presented. Dr. Matlin details many practical applications of cognitive psychology, such as study strategies, which would be of interest to educators, psychologists, and students alike.



2. As a psychology minor, I think Matlin does a wonderfully thorough job of covering cognition. However, as an English major, I find her style of writing irritatingly repetitive, and much more confusing than it needs to be. She uses a lot of examples to define concepts, rather than stating them--which would be very helpful. Furthermore, the glossary does absolutely nothing to help the confused student, since it basically reprints the in-text sentence where the vocabulary word appears. I would recommend sending the book to a literary editor who could redo the text.



3. This is your typical text book used in college courses. It is very easy to read and make your own notes on each section. I found that at the end of each section, there was a section summary which is helpful. I used the section summaries to study for exams. Overall, I would recommended this book for Psychology majors or anyone else who was interested in cognition.



4. I taught a section of cognitive psychology and decided to use this book. What a mistake. The discussions in this book are terrible, and are really more so a long progression of random key words for students to memorize than organized and in depth explorations of topics. The discussion of memory is ridiculous. I have used intro to psych books that had better and more thorough discussions. For judgment and decision making I didn't use the book at all, it's discussion was so bad. This very amateurish book is filled with WAY too many first-person stories and anecdotes for any serious textbook. I kept asking myself, is this a college textbook, or Matlin's damn diary?



5. I just graduated Collage and this is one of two books I'm keeping. We read it from cover to cover for my class and I didn't mind, I wanted to read it. Its very well written and accessible.

5 comments about Freud And Beyond: A History Of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought.

1. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting a historical perspective of the development of psychoanalytic theory. This book takes you through different offsprings of psychoanalysis beginning with Freud's contribution. It also offers a comparison of each new theory with classic Freudian psychoanalytic thought so you have an idea of which aspects were further developed and which ones were "trashed." It's a good foundational book for anyone beginning an interest in psychoanalysis.



2. If you, like me, are curious and fascinated about psychology and psychoanalysis, have confusedly heard some bits & pieces about Freud and his weird but intriguing ideas, and think that it has finally come the time when you want to find out what it's all about, this book will serve you as a gentle and effective introduction. You will gain an historical perspective of the main theories and school of thoughts, with enough material to get you started and further stimulate your curiosity, avoiding overwhelming details. Of course to really appreciate psychology and psychoanalysis you eventually have to read the main authors directly... as this discipline is not clear cut like mathematics or computer science, and the interpretation and relative weights given to the original ideas can play a major role. But you have to start somewhere, you need to have a bird's view of the discipline so that you find your orientation and decide where to go digging for more. This book serves exactly this purpose, with a synthesis of Freud's views, and an exposition of the derivation of his theories . the psychology of the ego, the Psychology of the Self, and Freudian revisionism. Alongside this historical development some case studies are presented, a nice addition to help keep the discussion on practical and realistic terms. As a minor criticism to this book, I wish there cases had been discussed in more depth. Also, you cannot help getting the impression that , like in philosophy, psychology is a field where bs is standard practice, there are no experiments like in physics and biology that can disprove the impostors. As a general rule, avoid the most convoluted and obscure authors. Freud might be weird, he might be wrong, but at least he was very clear about his ideas. Almost invariably, here and elsewhere, complexity is just a cover for emptiness.



3. This book is one of the best that I've read on Freud, his ideas, and those who have branched from the psychoanalytic movement. It gives case examples for Freud's most basic concepts and showcases psychoanalytic therapists beautifully. I would HIGHLY recommend this book.



4. I received this book by accident.It was bought as a present for another person and was left at my house. On finding it I started to read without a lot of interest, but suddenly realied that this book is a wonderful review of phsychoanalysis. It is easy to understand and gives a thumbnail review of many important people in this field. After having spoken very enthusiasically to other people I was asked to get another copy and others have asked to borrow mine after I have finished. But this book will only be lent out and not given, this is a reference book of the highest wuality.



5. What a delight to read: it is hard to put down and not let its appeal interfer with work. Mitchell is a gifted writer who can explain the difficult in delightful prose. His descriptions glide over the page and you are spurred on to learn more. He manages to cover most of the development and ideas of psychoanalysis from its beginnings with Freud to the present. A rare find.

No comments about Cultural Anthropology (12th Edition).