As a person who's spent hundreds of hours researching and reading about prostate cancer over the last four years, I picked up Lange and Adamec's new book with misgivings that quickly changed into affirmative head-nodding. I found the book to be well-organized, and as I scanned and flipped back and forth through its coverage of all the big questions, I concluded this is a book that has long been needed. Although the book is in the DUMMIES series, it is from start to finish a first-rate professional and easily-readable treatment of a complex and deadly serious subject -- prostate cancer. Whether it's one's first foray into the shifting world of prostate cancer data, treatment and research or one wants to double-check what one has learned, this is THE book to buy.

Helene Deutsch was born in Przemysl, Poland, in 1884. After studying medicine at the University of Vienna School of Medicine she worked during World war I as a full-time assistant at the Wagner-Jauregg psychiatric clinic. During this period her interest in psychoanalytic ideas grew to such an extent that she eventually entered into analysis with Freud, resigned from her position at the clinic, and became a member of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society. Her contributions to the Society were quickly recognized when, in January 1925, the Vienna Training Institute was established, she was nominated its Director. In 1935 she left Vienna for America, eventually settling with her husband, Felix Deutsch, in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she took up work as a lecturer at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. The first volume of her influential work, The Psychology of Women, appeared in 1944, to be followed by the second volume a year later. When, towards the end of her life, Helene Deutsch came to consider the relationship of The Psychology of Women to Psychoanalysis of the Sexual Functions of Women, first published almost twenty years before, she observed: "It is evident that the first publication already contains all the building stones for the latter. What was first conceived by intuition and observation of a small number of analyzed women was later supported and confirmed by thirty years of experience".

Paul Roazen is Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. His books include Brother Animal: The story of Freud and Tausk, Freud and his Followers, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's life, and Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis

Iam a clinical psychologist for the past fourteen years and I were very pleased when I read this book. In my clinical practice I have been using the Rorschach for evaluation and treatment planning. Paul Lerner has a wonderful and clear way to integrate the rorschach with the psychoanalytic appoach's. I were very surprised too when I saw some understandings I have and the researches which confirm and validated then. He also make a historical review of the testing integrating with the more recent advances in psychoanalytic theory and the rorschach theory and assessment.

Originally published in 1985, this book is also available under the title of "Advanced Psychocybernetics." A wonderful 35 page chapter about goals and their importance is worth the price of the book all by itself. Make the effort to obtain this book and improve every facet of your life! Cybernetic's beginnings (with Norbert Wiener) well covered here, real life examples of individuals achieving undreamed of career success are included. Buy it today!

In this basic book, Paul Diel shows that innermost motivations, unlike the mobiles of action, are the secret personal intents: inner tensions. Often repressed, and removed from conscious control, they are our ulterior motives (arriere-pensees). If such is the case, it follows necessarily that inner motivations, which decide essentially of our activity, cannot be studied but by way of introspection, which ensures the feasibility of a curative self-control.

This book restates and applies to education and reeducation the psychology of motivations. It proposes a new answer, based on a deep-seated biological definition of the origins of the values love and sociability, to questions relative to social and individual life. Either being concerned by education or self-reeducation, it is only through becoming aware of our inner motivations and our unconsistent value judgments, that one may answer to the real questions of life.

Psychosomatic medicine, which owes to Freud the discovery of subconscious thought, restitutes its deep-seated meaning to the Hippocratic formula "mens sana in corpore sano" (A healthy soul is a healthy body). In order to endorse its complementarity to medicine, the psychology of motivation, outpassing the pan-sexual doctrine, has to take into account the role of imaginative exaltation in the "disorders of the mind" and in psychopathic symptoms.

This, as the title suggests, is an introductory book about psychometrics. No different you might think from many of the introductory psychometric books that are now available to students and the interested non-specialist reader. However, you would be quite wrong. This is an introductory psychometrics book with a difference. That difference is an introduction to quantitative scientific measurement and some preliminary exposure to Kline's "New Psychometrics". This is a book that will invite a student to think, in fact, the two chapters that introduce these two areas (at the beginning and at the end of the book) will force certain issues to have to be addressed by both lecturing staff and by the students themselves. This is a book that I now recommend for my own introductory psychometrics students - because it is not a cookbook of methods, but instead, a thoughtful treatise on the whole area of psychometrics from the man who was one of its most experienced proponents and practitioners. For this reason, it will also appeal to professional psychologists who wish to understand some of the "big issues" in psychometrics, refresh themselves on basic concepts and constructs, but also have available Kline's wit, experience, and common-sense approach.

Chapter 1, entitled "What is Psychometrics" is a brief 7 page introduction and overview of the domain of psychometrics, and the kinds of tests it has produced (e.g. measuring intelligence and personality; the need for quantitative methodology to handle test scores etc.).

Chapter 2, entitled "Scientific Measurement" is where the book departs from any other book on the market (apart from Michell's (1990) graduate-level book). Instead of the usual mechanical repetition of S.S. Steven's four levels of measurement as found in many other introductory texts, what we get here is a context for measurement in its widest sense, an exposition of the crucial nature of units within scientific measurement, and then the four levels of measurement placed into a context of Steven's operational-representational theory of measurement. This chapter is very readable, and very clear, but the content will be completely novel for many students of psychology, as they are rarely introduced at such an early stage to the nature of science and measurement within science. However, although Kline shows that psychometrics does not meet the criteria for quantitative scientific measurement, he does show that the measurement it does make is worthwhile, valuable, and productive. This chapter is an excellent feeder for tutorial/seminar work. Where using it with graduate students, it should also be augmented with chapters 1 and 2 in Kline's (1998) book "The New Psychometrics".

Chapter 3, entitled "The Characteristics of Good Psychometric Tests" is a straightforward introduction to basic statistical descriptive parameters, reliability, and validity. The chapter is conceptual in focus. No formulae are presented in this chapter (just a few are given in a Glossary). Instead, great care is taken to present the issues such as measurement error in a clear and readable fashion.

Chapter 4, entitled "Test Construction" is an outline of the major procedures and methods used with psychometrics as the means by which psychological tests are constructed. The properties of desirable items are discussed, along with the major methods of item analysis and test construction. Within this chapter are basic definitions and examples of classical item analysis, criterion keying, ipsative vs normative tests, factor analysis (with a brief description confirmatory factor analysis), and item response theory.

Chapters 5, 6, and 7, entitled respectively "Intelligence and Ability Tests", "Personality Tests" and "Motivation, Mood, Attitude and Other Tests" are chapters that variously describe the kinds of tests that have been constructed for each domain. Each chapter presents the overarching definitions of the content area, the theoretical bases for the tests, and then a brief description of some of the important psychological tests that have been subsequently created.

Chapter 8, entitled "Psychometric Testing in Applied Psychology" is a description of where psychometric tests are mainly applied in professional practice, educational, occupational/ organizational, and clinical psychology. Here, Kline tries to place psychological testing into context, describing where it has proven to be essential, useful, and sometimes misleading. But, overall, the reader is given the grand picture of the impact of psychometrics on many real-world practices. This is a nice chapter - with some fine anecdotes. Kline's experience in this area shines through.

Chapter 9, entitled "The New Psychometrics and Conclusions" is the final chapter where he draws together the main features discussed in the earlier chapters, returning first to the distinction made between scientific and psychometric measurement. Kline again stresses that psychometrics is not worthless, but that it's limitations might be seen to severely restrict any future progress in the better understanding of psychological attributes. It is here that Kline introduces his concept of the "New Psychometrics" - a way forward that takes into account many of Michell's (1997) propositions, and that seems to offer a way off the plateau on which current psychometrics now seems stranded. Kline proceeds to look at the areas of intelligence and personality, trying to see where some new radical approaches to measurement might be clues to the new way forward. This will be of great interest to many readers. The last two paragraphs of the book are pregnant with meaning (to borrow a marvellous phrase from Nunnally)

So, there you have it. A very nice introduction to psychometrics, but also a logical exposition of the scientific context within which psychometrics is embedded. A unique book written by a unique professor of psychometrics. I heartily recommend it to those new to the area who wish to begin to understand psychological measurement at a level beyond mere operational knowledge.

-References-

Kline, P. (1998) The New Psychometrics: Science, Psychology, and Measurement. Routledge. ISBN: 0-415-18751-6

Michell, J. (1990) An Introduction to the Logic of Psychological Measurement. Lawrence Erlbaum. ISBN: 0-8058-0566-4

Michell, J. (1997) Quantitative science and the definition of measurement in Psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 3, 355-383

Paul and Lentz (1977) is a hallmark study in the history of psychology. Paul uses painstaking methodological rigor to establish the Social Learning Program as "treatment of choice" for the chronically mentally ill, in terms of behavioral, community and cost outcomes. This book is a model for scientific psychologists and a great learning tool for students. The experimental design in itself is worthy of a seminar in scientific methods. Moreover, Paul's discussion of implementation of effective mental health programs in "real world" systems is sobering while his insights are refreshing. A must read for all in the mental health field.

This is one of the finest books ever written about British pubs and their tradional outdoor sign art. The author, Paul Corballis, nimbly guides the reader through the history of pub signs and the book is chock full of entertaining color illustrations and photographs.