The International Dictionary of Psychology - Softcover

Sutherland, N. S.; Sutherland, Stuart

9780824525095: The International Dictionary of Psychology

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0824525094 ISBN 13: 9780824525095

Publisher: Crossroad Pub Co, 1995

This book is not merely a dictionary of psychology, it is dictionary for psychologists. It attempts to include all technical terms tht a psychologists is likey to encounter.

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From Booklist:

Sutherland, a British experimental psychologist, here updates and expands his International Dictionary of Psychology (1989) by adding more than 1,000 new terms and initialisms (e.g., akinetic mutism, FAS test, zone of proximal development), and revising definitions of others (agnosia). As before, his purpose is to provide short explanations of terms found in the psychological literature, including those which originated in other fields (e.g., equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB), biogenic amines). If words in definitions are also entries, they appear in all-capital letters. Usually phrases appear in straightforward order, but laws and methods are now inverted, a change from the earlier edition. Spelling is British. No pronunciations are given and no biographies are included.

Definitions range from 5 to 100 words and generally are easily understood, but occasionally one is densely populated with other terms that also need to be looked up. Diagrams are provided for a few terms. There are still a few editorialized definitions (e.g., agraphiaa form of aphasia in which the person is unable to write meaningfully, "a syndrome affecting many psychologists" ). These provide a bit of levity in an otherwise scholarly tome but are also somewhat jarring. Students may be looking for longer, more discursive, definitions that appear in volumes Sutherland characterizes as "encyclopaedias not dictionaries." This is not the first choice of a public library for a psychology dictionary, but its more than 11,000 entries and inclusion of terms from other fields make it a good choice for academic or professional libraries to supplement such titles as Wolman's Dictionary of Behavioral Science [RBB F 15 90] or Corsini's four-volume Encyclopedia of Psychology [RBB S 15 94] for students, faculty, and practitioners.

From Library Journal:

At long last, psychologists and lay readers have a legitimate dictionary (rather than an encyclopedia masquerading as one) that briefly defines technical psychological language and jargon borrowed from other disciplines. In this easy-to-use, up-to-date reference source, Oxford lecturer and writer Sutherland supplies explanations (and sometimes examples) for traditional psychological terms such as overlearning, frontal lobotomy, and ego neurosis . But more importantly, he also includes phrases from related subject areas, e.g., propositional attitude (philosophy), deep structure (linguistics), and triage (medicine). Sutherland's entries, which contain ample cross-references, are usually no more than a paragraph and occasionally inject some humor. For example, in the entry neurotic fiction , Sutherland first gives Adler's meaning and then says "any novel by Iris Murdoch." This is an essential reference tool.
- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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