International library of psychology

What might the world’s most notorious psychologist say about the mysterious expression of the Mona Lisa that has puzzled art critics for years? In Leonardo da Vinci Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzes the Renaissance painter. Freud explained, “Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep." Perhaps ahead of his time, da Vinci used his artistic talent not just to create thought-provoking paintings but to study the human anatomy. In this biography, Freud unveils the talent and inscrutability of da Vinci.

This book has two aims: to set forth a description of changes in logical operations between childhood and adolescence and to describe the formal structures that mark the completion of the operational development of intelligence. To tie these together the authors have tried to present the material in a way that would stress the close relationship between the two. Each of the first fifteen chapters (Parts I and II) includes an experimental part by the first author and a brief final analysis by the second author. This analysis aims to isolate the formal or propositional structures found in each case. Chapters 16 and 17 (beginning of Part III) are the work of the second author, whereas Chapter 18 is a joint production. In addition, the specific problems of experimental induction analyzed from a functional standpoint (as distinguished from the present structural analysis) will be the subject of a special work by the first author. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).

When people (including psychologists) talk about emotions, they usually assume that they are describing something that goes on simply inside the individual mind or body, and that can be easily isolated, pinned down and dissected. Brian Parkinson shows that the relationship between ideas and reality, or words and things, is far more complex. He gets to 'the heart of emotion by denying that the personal heart has much to do with it' and looks at emotion in real-time encounters between people, expressed in gesture and movement, talk and silence. Ideas and Realities of Emotion presents a clear and concise overview of state-of-the-art research into emotion, focusing on cognitive appraisal, bodily changes, action tendencies and expressive displays. The book challenges the idea of emotion as an individual intrapsychic phenomenon, and formulates a new and distinctive conceptual framework based on the idea of emotion as interpersonal communication - a social practice influenced by culture and language. Ideas and Realities of Emotion will prove invaluable to all those approaching emotion from a social psychological perspective, whether at advanced undergraduate or graduate level.