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ago? One answer is the rationale for reading any psychology book: that it
provides insights into psychological issues not available elsewhere. Although
many psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th century probably started their career by
reading this book, it is not appropriate today as an introduction to psychology. Too
many of James's viewpoints are antiquated, and his facts, outdated or incorrect. Neither
is it the book to read if you are looking for contemporary psychological views
or a compilation of psychological knowledge. Recent textbooks are better for these purposes.
Yet, the word most frequently used to describe James's Principles of Psychology
is probably 'monumental' and rightly so because not only is this a lengthy work (~1400pgs),
but it also is the culmination of a long line of philosophical thinking about the Soul,
Self, Mind, Matter, and related topics that began with the pre-Socratic Greeks
and continued through the 19th century, when positivist philosophers and experimentalists
began to explore psychologically relevant philosophical questions in more concrete terms,
invoking a scientific method and rejecting metaphysics. At the end of the 19th century, a
seeming riot of discussion about the meaning of life, the nature of consciousness, mind,
ego, evolution, and related subjects dominated the scientific and popular culture.
At this point in history, William James, an American trained as a physician and employed
as a Harvard professor, examines the various philosophies of the previous two millenia, picking
out those aspects relevant to psychology, comparing and sorting them to reveal their value
as unambiguous theories that might be tested by research, and reflecting on how the evidence
stacks up in their favor. He also advances his own, original conceptions on various issues.
His work is not the first to collect speculation and evidence into a coherent
psychology, and there are many previous works with "Psychology" in their titles,
but James's efforts would galvanize an American discipline of psychological science that
would eventually become a dominant intellectual force.
James defines psychology as the "Science of Mental Life" and describes the
stream of consciousness as "the ultimate fact for psychology." Out of his viewpoint,
the school of functionalism in psychology developed, where the mind is conceived as a
useful organ that evolves according to natural selection and grows according
to discoverable rules. His orientation towards physiological and behavioral data
eventually diminished the then dominant psychological
method of introspection that James himself uses so frequently with great effect.
Subsequent viewpoints in psychology, such as behaviorism, though taking part of their
inspiration from functionalism, reject James's definition of psychology, so that
by the end of the 20th century, most psychologists with an empirical orientation may
call themselves "behavioral scientists," but certainly not "mental scientists."
Reading this book can be disconcerting, perhaps because of his period style or
Victorian sensibilities, or the frequent, unglossed short quotes and phrases in German, French,
and Latin because he assumes the reader has at least these minimal language skills.
Perhaps also, it is because James is not only conversant with the giants of philosophy
and experimental technique who preceeded him, but seemingly, with virtually every
published sentence to date bearing on the subjects of concern, and in veritable fractal detail,
producing a tour de force in erudition. His is not the style of current psychology
journals and textbooks, but fortunately he does translate into English many long passages
he quotes from their original sources. Yet possibly the most disconcerting aspects
are the subjects that James raises in this book.
The new mainstream psychology after James rejects many topics as unsuitable - even for
discussion - that figure prominently in the intellectual history of philosophy
and psychology. James's view that the concept of Soul should be eliminated in
scientific works is one point on which later psychologists heartily agree, but they
also, to a large extent, throw out other concepts of central concern to James, such as
mind, emotion, will, and feeling. Rare pleas by scholars
with varying backgrounds (e.g., Ornstein, Tomkins) urge students of psychology to
revisit issues discussed by James and address the larger questions contained therein, but
such exhorations echo mostly in halls of learning emptied by Vita enhancement pressures.
Renewal of interest reappears lately for some of the suppressed topics, cast into such areas as
cognitive psychology or emotion theory, but James's idea that the mind is a core
concept remains foreign to virtually all contemporary psychologists, and much of his
emphasis seems uncomfortable from today's viewpoint.
The reluctance among psychologists to embrace such philosophical and scientific issues
concerning the mind is remarkably not shared by some physicists, mathematicians,
biologists, computer scientists, and other scientists who in recent works have implied
that psychologists may be irrelevant to elucidating such issues, if not muddle-headed,
scientific dwarfs. This twist is ironic because psychologists restrict their
vocabulary and investigations partly to ape their conception of these "hard-core" sciences.
It is not clear whether psychology will survive the choices that psychologists have
made about their subject matter, or whether psychology departments will inevitably be
diced and parsed into their appropriate slots in departments of computer science, biology,
medicine, statistics, and physics, but certainly, the end of psychology is nearer if
tomorrow's students of psychology fail to study James's Principles of Psychology.
James's work is the jumping off point for much of what forms 20th century psychology:
habit, association, attention, memory, imagination, object and space perception, etc.
His thoughts about emotion, feelings, the self, consciousness, and other topics remain important
for today's theoretical views. On the other hand, this work predates psychoanalysis
and does not include an organized account of abnormal psychology, human communication,
and other topics raised in most elementary surveys of psychology. The context in which
James puts scientific psychology is probably the most important lesson of this book.
The Dover edition is unabridged, the only form of this work that should be
considered by the serious reader.
Roughly speaking, there are two main areas in psychology:
1. The clinical psychology, psychoanalysis and treatment. That area was to a large part shaped by Freud.
2. The cognitive psychology which describes how we think and experience the world. That area was founded by William James, and this book is his main work
The book was written before the separation of psychological science, philosophy and discussions about ethics and human values. It was also written before much of the cognitive psychology degenerated into investigations of white mice running through mazes. It can therefore give a wide ranging and consistent wiev of our thinking and experience.
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I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about team-building or to become eligible for that next promotion.
Mr. McIntosh's work not only provides concise, principle centered ideas, but he writes the book in a readable and entertaining style.
I would recommend the book to my colleagues or anyone who is serious about setting vision and inspiring workers to achieve the next level of success.
Howard M. Hamilton, Ph.D.
Superintendent, Pleasant Valley School District
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AAA provides not only an analytical framework for organisational change, but - more importantly - an extensive and concrete manual for implementation.
When you've done enough reading on the subject and have to actually DO something, get this book.
The expected outcome of area activity analysis is cultural change (starting with renaming teams to reflect their real roles as service providers), focusing the mission on service, defining clear activity descriptions for which the teams are responsible, determining how to measure team effectiveness, establishing service-related performance standards and restructuring reward systems.
Using a seven phase approach, the book leads you through the entire process of transforming to "natural work teams". The first three phases are foundational, and consist of (I) preparations for the activity analysis, (II) developing service-oriented mission statements for the functional areas (not easily done), (III) defining the activities for each area.
Phase IV is the pivot point during which you develop customer relationships. Customers can be internal customers of the activity or external customers. In this respect there is a set of classifications that need to be performed for the activities themselves, which are: Real-Value-Added (RVA), which provide value as seen through the eyes of the activity's customer; Business-Value-Added (BVA), which may be necessary to support internal business functions, but provide no direct benefit to the activity's customer, and No-Value-Added (NVA), which are not essential to business functions, nor do they add any perceivable value to customers. This information is used in Phase V to determine the efficiency of the activity. It is also worth noting at this point that the what authors call "activities" are processes and process chains, so you may have to either adopt his vocabulary or mentally translate as you read. This is not a criticism of the book, however, because the approach is valuable and will enable you to classify activities in accordance with their value characteristics and determine if they are optimum for their intended use. Phase VI entails developing supplier partnerships. This is applicable to both external supply chain partners as well as internal activities. An example of an internal supplier partnership, taken from my profession, is services provided by IT to end users (usually codified in service level agreements and comprised of service level objectives). The final phase, VII, addresses continuous improvement. An added bonus is the CD ROM that comes with the book contains an application called WorkDraw, which is a process modeling tool with many of the same features as Micrografx iGrafx Process.
As an IT professional who works extensively on projects for service level management and IT-Business alignment I found this book to be a gem. In fact, the service-orientation of the "natural work teams" has changed my thinking about how to structure an ideal IT organization, and has also greatly influenced my thinking about how to manage service delivery. The book earns 5 solid stars and my highest recommendation.
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The polished version is in first person, and was obviously dictated, which is an asset. B. H. Roberts was one of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint's greatest orators, apologists, and scrappers, so the autobiography has the same rhetorical punchy-ness that that makes reading this book pure eye candy.
It is written in the first person, and Elder Roberts exposes his soul as he tells of his early childhood in Dickens's England, his emigration and journey to Salt Lake City, his hardpan life in the west, and his eventual embracing of the Mormonism. This man had one wild life, from rescuing the bodies of two missionaries that had been killed by a mob in the south, to running for the House of Representatives, and being denied a seat because he was a polygamist.
I confess that reading the life of the man is only half the story. Roberts had a very keen and grabby intellect, so you need to read his philosophical and theological works in addition to studying his life. He is considered the best intellectual among the Latter-day Saints. This is a very high honor, considering that he had a bare-minimum education, and was illiterate for the first eight years of his life. He was a self-made intellectual. Why do we, who have so much, do so little?
The only drawback is that Elder Roberts relied on memory as he was dictating, so some of the dates aren't accurate. Dr. Truman G. Madsen has written the definitive, and so far the only biography of B. H. Roberts called "Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story," which is a better book, since it fills in the gaps, rounds out the edges, and gets deeper into his philosophy.
This is the story of a 9 year old boy who comes to America from England with his 11 year old sister. The year is about 1867. The two of them cross the ocean, then they cross the country to the Salt Lake Valley in a covered wagon company. It is just amazing how he could survive such an ordeal. He has no shoes for most of the trip, and no coat or change of clothes. His shrit and pants are made from a policeman's coat in England. His sister gives him her slip to cover him at night and then he gives it back to her to wear in the morning. One night he climbs in a barrel to sleep. It has molasses in the bottem. He is too tired to climb our and so sleeps in it anyway. The next morning he is covered with the sticky surup. The only clothes he has are so covered with dust by the end of the day that they are no longer sticky. There are many touching stories in this book. His sister is so tender hearted that her tears drop on his feet as she picks the thorns from his bear feet each evening.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I couldn't put it down.
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