Psychology's Ghosts
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back
Jerome Kagan
A leading psychologist takes a hard look at his profession today and argues for important changes in practices and attitudes
This book is the product of years of thought and a profound concern for the state of contemporary psychology. Jerome Kagan, a theorist and leading researcher, examines popular practices and assumptions held by many psychologists. He uncovers a variety of problems that, troublingly, are largely ignored by investigators and clinicians. Yet solutions are available, Kagan maintains, and his reasoned suggestions point the way to a better understanding of the mind and mental illness.
Kagan identifies four problems in contemporary psychology: the indifference to the setting in which observations are gathered, including the age, class, and cultural background of participants and the procedure that provides the evidence (he questions, for example, the assumption that similar verbal reports of well-being reflect similar psychological states); the habit of basing inferences on single measures rather than patterns of measures (even though every action, reply, or biological response can result from more than one set of conditions); the defining of mental illnesses by symptoms independent of their origin; and the treatment of mental disorders with drugs and forms of psychotherapy that are nonspecific to the diagnosed illness. The author's candid discussion will inspire the debate that is needed in a discipline seeking to fulfill its promises.
Jerome Kagan is Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Harvard University, where he was co-director of the Mind/Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. He is the author of nearly 400 papers and numerous books. He lives in Belmont, MA.
“Jerome Kagan’s impressive, masterful, and thoroughly readable book examines several of the most knotty and pressing controversies in academic psychology today. One of the strengths of the book is the sheer weight of evidence Kagan draws upon in advancing his lively, probing, and always thought-provoking arguments.”—Christopher Lane, author of Shyness and The Age of Doubt
"Erudite, illuminating, and engaging, Psychology’s Ghosts provides solutions to key conceptual problems that continue to haunt our field, from the study of happiness to the treatment of mental illness."—Richard J. McNally, author of What is Mental Illness?
Publication Date: March 27, 2012