Gardner Murphy

Psychology, in the sense of reflection upon the nature and activities of mind, is a very ancient discipline, one which reached great heights in ancient Greece and has continued (in intimate relation with philosophy) with every phase of European civilization. During the nineteenth century this literary and philosophic psychology underwent profound changes, chiefly as a result of the progress of biology, from which both concepts and methods were freely borrowed. Many of its greatest students began to rely upon experimental and mathematical method, believing that psychology could become a science akin to other biological sciences. It is the purpose of this volume to trace the course of those changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have thus tended to transform psychology and to give it its present character. This text presents a detailed history of modern psychology not limited to the experimental tradition. -- Description from (June 12, 2012.).

Broad introduction to the study of the human mind from early times to the present.

TABLE OF CONTENTS : Prologue: The Asian setting -- The psychology of India. Introduction -- Hinduism and Buddhism -- Salya -- The Rig-Veda -- The Upanishads -- Practical wisdom -- The Bhagavad-Gita -- Yoga -- Buddhism -- The psychology of China -- Introduction -- The Book of Changes -- Confucianism -- Taoism -- Chinese conceptions of human nature -- The psychology of Japan. Buddhism -- Zen Buddhism -- Practical wisdom -- A backward glance.

In writing this book the aim of the author is to write about personality in such a way as to help in clarifying the little that we know and to show its possible relations to the vast and confused domain that we do not yet understand. The best way to attempt the exploration, perhaps, is to write in terms of the foci of present research, expanding fanwise, through hypotheses. This book, then, if at all successful in its aim, will be a companion for the investigator who likes to see problems defined in terms of directions in which they might lead; an explorer's kit, containing, to be sure, some standard tools, and also some maps. Throughout the volume the approach to personality is made chiefly in terms of origins and modes of development on the one hand, interrelations or structural problems on the other. It is hoped that some of the present chapters will, by raising questions, whet the reader's appetite for clinical and therapeutic literature. This is not a book on diagnosis or therapy of personality problems, or upon any type of clinical approach. It is simply an attempt at evaluation of data on how personality grows. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychology, in the sense of reflection upon the nature and activities of mind, is a very ancient discipline, one which reached great heights in ancient Greece and has continued (in intimate relation with philosophy) with every phase of European civilization. During the nineteenth century this literary and philosophic psychology underwent profound changes, chiefly as a result of the progress of biology, from which both concepts and methods were freely borrowed. Many of its greatest students began to rely upon experimental and mathematical method, believing that psychology could become a science akin to other biological sciences. It is the purpose of this volume to trace the course of those changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have thus tended to transform psychology and to give it its present character. This text presents a detailed history of modern psychology not limited to the experimental tradition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).