The Social Psychology of Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Interfaces of Social and Clinical Psychology
The Social Psychology of Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Interfaces of Social and Clinical Psychology
…documents the critical interplay between social and clinical psychology in both theory and research and helps to solidify their mutually beneficial coexistence.
List Price: $ 49.95
Price: $ 49.95
Kirk Steele said,
Wrote on May 17, 2011 @ 5:31 am
Social Perspective,
Residing in a international, cross cultural environment, I required a comprehensive and concise study of the social perspective on emotional and behavioral studies. This book was recommended by my advisor. I recommend it here.
The editors bring the structuralist and interactionist perspectives of sociology into psychology with the contributing writers in the most illucidating manner. Even if I weren’t a student of psychology, this book would make a very fascinating read.
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|Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" said,
Wrote on May 17, 2011 @ 6:00 am
A “Shotgun Truce” heard all the way Around the Client’s Mind,
This book gave me a brain cramp. Not that being an International Relations Expert, had not already prepared me well for intra-disciplinary chaos. But what is going on in the field of psychology is something else again: This is open passive aggressive warfare by the very people we depend on to keep us mentally healthy and sane.
It is clear from this book that the internecine warfare is so acute that the substance and even the concerns of the client, which should be driving the process, and driving the various factions closer together, are both mere afterthoughts, a sideline to the ruling chaos. It is so acute that the casual reader like myself is led to ask: why bother about trying to integrate the field at all? If neither the substance, nor concern for the health of the client is driving this process, then what indeed IS, one might ask? To my untrained eyes, the answer appears to be bureaucratic turf battles as far down as the eye can see: Huge egos talking past each other, and canceling out each others theoretical contributions.
The level and degree of parochialism in the field of psychology is so ingrained that the whole is a lot less than the sum of the parts and it is a wonder that any coherent accomplishments are achieved at all. Disciplinary fragmentation seems to have taken on a life of its own, so much so that this book describes the culture of the in-fighting, but has very little to say about the content, the value, or the importance of its various disparate contributions and accomplishments. Maybe these authors were simply scared they would offend one faction or the other?
We get a dizzying catalogue of categories, virtual islands of semi- and pre-theories, thrown at us but with no organizational structure or assessments of their value to improving client health or even of their contributions to the coherence of the field of psychology more generally. Since there is no overarching meta-theory, there is also no basis for theoretical coherence, no basis for organizational structure, no consensus or consistent criteria against which to judge results, and thus certainly no convergence in theoretical accomplishments that anyone is brave enough to point to and discuss: This is intellectual gridlock of the worse kind.
The reader is left to his own devices. For trained practitioners and experts in the field this may be enough, but for the casual reader like myself, this is just short of an insult.
Quite clearly, what the field seems to lack is adult supervision: someone with the intellectual clout and vision to establish a proper framework for an overarching meta-theory, an organizational structure; criteria for valued contributions to better client health; and someone who can crack heads to pull the many huge egos into line in search of common convergent set of goals for improving client mental health. There are problems “out there” to be solved. It is not all about big egos and intellectual posturing. Rome burns while Nero fiddles: America desperately needs help from its mental health professionals.
Although the articles are better than average for a mature discipline, they are nevertheless unusually lifeless, pedantic and show much too much deference to artificial boundaries. Also the almost incestuously circular citations can become academic suicide when “pet” theories fail, as some almost always do. I found Eliot Aronson’s and Robert Wright’s works, both of which ignored the interdisciplinary squabbles, much more interesting.
For these reasons, I could not get my mind into this volume; I could not purge from it the thought that these are just separate fiefdoms of jealously guarded parochial intellectual interests that may or may not have a thing to do with client health. My attitude was colored negatively from the start causing my disappointment in the book as a whole. I should reread it but I won’t. Two stars
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