Shaping Psychology
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| Author | Tomasz Witkowski |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Publication date | 2020 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | VIII, 331 |
| ISBN | 978-3-030-50002-3 |
Shaping Psychology: Perspectives on Legacy, Controversy and the Future of the Field is a 2020 book written by Tomasz Witkowski.
The book is a collection of comprehensive conversations with influential psychologists from the early 21st century. The book features interviews with notable figures who have significantly impacted the field, covering a broad spectrum of specializations from research, mental health, critical psychology, to neuroscience and the Open Science movement. Interviewees include Elizabeth F. Loftus, Jerome Kagan, Michael I. Posner, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Robert J. Sternberg, Robert Plomin, Susan J. Blackmore, Joseph E. LeDoux, Noam Chomsky, Roy F. Baumeister, Erica Burman, Brian A. Nosek, Vikram H. Patel, Daniel Kahneman, and Carol A. Tavris. These experts discuss the controversies, crisis, and future prospects of psychology, sharing their views on the challenges in the field, their careers, and their formative experiences.
Reception
In her review for Science-Based Medicine and Skeptical Inquirer, Harriet Hall offered insights into the book. She notes: Tomasz Witkowski’s new book (…) provides an intriguing look at the current state of psychology, its problems and possible solutions, and hopes for the future. (…) I have met several of the people Witkowski interviewed, but now I feel as if I have spent more time with them and know them better. And I have learned a lot from them. If you want to meet these psychologists and learn about the current state of psychology, this book is a great way to do it. Witkowski’s unique approach has resulted in a very readable, entertaining, and very informative book.[1]
Michael Heap, editor of the Skeptical Intelligencer, commented in his review that “Amongst the issues about which Witkowski is most concerned are the quality, utility and validity of much of the research being published nowadays; the ‘replication crisis’; the efficacy of many psychotherapeutic practices that psychologists seem willing to embrace; and the failure of psychologists to mount a sufficiently strong challenge to their psychiatric colleagues’ fetish for diagnostic labelling. (…) The picture that emerges from the book is quite representative of the discipline as a whole.
References
- ^ "Meet the Psychologists | Science-Based Medicine". sciencebasedmedicine.org. 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2023-12-05.