Psychology Applied To Modern Life Adjustment In The 21st Century Book

College psychology textbooks have evolved something like movies over the years -- from black-and-white to color and noticeably more expensive. This is the ninth edition of the perdurable general text (2006; the current one is the twelfth); owing to its age I got it in hardcover for less than ten dollars. It offers an overview of the "classic" psychodynamic theories (Freud, Jung, Adler) much as in the general texts of my youth in the 1970's. Yet even after all this time, I'm sorry to say, no mention is made of the late Heinz Kohut and his significant achievements in the field of self-psychology or "healthy narcissism."

More elaborate graphics like color charts and illustrative comic strips like KUDZU and SALLY FORTH are significant changes; also is the amount of space given over to help college students "find themselves." Developing interpersonal relationships and even more so, fighting stress, receive a good deal of space here. (I am reminded of something a psych professor told me years ago: that the two reasons undergraduates major in the field are (1) to learn to help others, and (2) to try to figure themselves out.) It also goes without saying that matters of human sexuality receive much more tolerant treatment than they did forty or fifty years ago.

The general-interest reader who approaches this text as a matter of curiosity will find much to learn here, and at a good price.