How To Learn Psychology

April 17, 2008 10:26 AM

I have an interest in psychology that I'd like to explore further, but I'm not really sure how to start. I can't say I know much about the field of psychology. I'd like to explore alternatives to taking classes at the local community college (I'm not looking for a degree), but I'd definitely like to understand the mind more. Some books I've enjoyed reading: Prozac Nation, Paradox of Choice, Stumbling on Happiness.

Are there any books anyone would recommend to get me started on better understanding on the field of psychology (preferrably something more exciting to read than a text book)?

Any books that anyone would recommend because they're interesting?

Any other ways I can explore my interest that isn't book-based? Are classes the best way?



Thanks.

posted by defben to education (18 comments total)

I say go back to the source, Sigmund Freud.
posted by Sara Anne at 10:37 AM on April 17, 2008

Look up some reputable self help books written by psychologists and see if they've ever published anything academic. Are you looking for emotional psychology? Or more organic causes of psychological differences?
posted by lukeklein at 10:40 AM on April 17, 2008

Freud is NOT a source for psychology. He's more literature than science.

I think what you're looking for is pop psychology. Why don't take a look at some "Psychology Today" mags, find what you like, and go from there.

Good luck.
posted by hal_c_on at 10:41 AM on April 17, 2008

"Psychology" is a broad term; it can range from fuzzy therapist-talk to hardass mathematical quantification of behavior. If you're looking for a general overview, then an intro textbook will give you a quick survey that, while not exciting, will give you an idea of where you want to spend more time reading.

Looking at the books you've already read (which I have not), you might be interested in neuroeconomics, which looks at the neural stuff that underlies how people make decisions. I don't have any specific suggestions, but google it and you'll probably be able to get more of an idea of what there is to read.

I wouldn't say classes are the best way to learn, but they are a good way to focus your attention on stuff you want to learn. Like I said, psychology is a broad term and you can easily get lost in the sheer amount of info that has to be covered in a typical course. If you're near a university, you might look up professors (not necessarily just psychology professors) that seem like they're doing interesting work, and see if you can arrange to talk to them. Volunteering in a lab is a good way to be exposed to a lot of ideas around people who know them inside and out, but doing that depends on how much time you have and how willing the prof is to let you join the lab. Finally, another non-book source are the academic journals where all this is published. Getting access to those might be difficult, but there are some open-access journals available online (e.g., http://www.doaj.org/). If you're not experienced with scientific writing, this can be frustrating since it tends to be extremely dry material. On the other hand, this is where all the interesting ideas get hashed out before making it into book form.

Good luck.
posted by logicpunk at 10:55 AM on April 17, 2008

Intro psychology courses can be as exciting or as dull as the instructor chooses to make them, so whether the course is interesting will vary quite a bit, even though the subject matter will be very similar regardless of the academic institution.

Registering for a course or two at your local college or university doesn't obligate you to pursue a degree, diploma, or anything beyond the class itself.

Personally, I think classes are the best way to get an overview of the subject matter.
posted by gwenzel at 10:55 AM on April 17, 2008

Um, let's see here.

Damasio: Descartes Error on neuroscience.

Pinker: How the Mind Works but avoid Blank Slate because he makes a whole mess of strawmen of just about everyone else.

Introducing Semiotics was a good read from Icon Books, they also have an Introducing Psychology on the catalog that covers most of the major names. From their site "Freud, Pavlov, Skinner, Bandura, Piaget, Bowlby, Maslow and Rogers. "
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:10 AM on April 17, 2008

Glancing through my bookshelf for some tomes which are accessible to the layman but contain substantive content from genuine experts:

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge.

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

Strangers To Ourselves by Timothy Wilson

Groupthink by Irving Janis

Escaping the Self by Roy Baumeister

A User's Guide To The Brain by John Ratey

The How of Happpiness by Sonya Lyubomirsky

And although my copy has somehow gone missing, I would strongly recommend An Anthropologist On Mars by Oliver Sacks.
posted by tdismukes at 11:15 AM on April 17, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

If you want to get an overview of how scientific psychology works and the variety of areas of study within the discipline of psychology, a great source is Forty Studies That Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research by Roger R. Hock.
posted by hworth at 11:16 AM on April 17, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If you're open to neurology, I'd highly suggest the classics, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Phantoms in the Brain.
posted by you're a kitty! at 11:19 AM on April 17, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, I'm not sure of a book to get you started on psychology overall, because as others have said, it's such a wide field - there's a school of thought that says psychology could be swallowed up by the fields it overlaps with (sociology, neuroscience, etc) and nobody would be any the wiser. I don't think that obviously or my degree in it would be a bit pointless...

Anyway, I think the most interesting bit is the neuroscience end of things - for a primer you could do no better than The Human Brain: A Guided Tour by Susan Greenfield. For an overview of the cognitive end of things (and that is pretty much the dominant paradigm in psychology right now, even if it is a bit dry), How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker is a good primer, if a bit difficult at times. (Although take what he says with a pinch of salt; his ideas aren't quite as agreed-on as he'd like to think.) Also, an absolutely beautiful book, although it's not really a factual reader and is quite philosophical, is Into The Silent Land by Paul Brok, which is about neuropsychological disorders and how they mess with our perceptions of reality. Oh, and This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J Leitvin. I'd better stop or I'll be here all day.

The British Psychological Society's magazine, The Psychologist has a free archive - the past six months' articles are only available to subscribers, but after that they're free to all to read. They have some really good articles in there on recent studies and the state of the discipline and they're pretty accessible to complete beginners.

To go deeper than the pop psychology stuff - which is great and interesting but won't give you a firm grasp of what underpins psychology - you'll probably need to read up a bit on statistics and the philosophy of science, but I think you've got enough to be going on with :)
posted by terrynutkins at 11:30 AM on April 17, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I've been reading Social Intelligence and Scientific American Mind, and I found both very readable.

I also really liked this: Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies.

And, if your friends have a sense of humor, you could run small-scale social experiments on them. Not tremendously accurate because of the scale, but it's very interesting how we think of ourselves as logical, rational people and yet so much of our behavior is based upon things outside our conscious control.
posted by reebear at 12:04 PM on April 17, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Great topic. You might be interested in the podcast of All in the Mind, from Australia's ABC Radio National.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 12:12 PM on April 17, 2008

A couple of Radio Lab's episodes have been on psychology and neurology. They're an introduction, definitely, but quite well done. It's available as a podcast.
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:18 PM on April 17, 2008

Another option is find a class at almost any university that seems to be what you want and then check out the reading list. If they don't have a syllabus on line, you may be able to get a list of the books from the campus bookstore.
posted by metahawk at 12:18 PM on April 17, 2008

UC Berkeley puts podcasts of some of their classes online.
posted by comwiz at 12:53 PM on April 17, 2008

I have tons of Psychology blogs in my feed reader. If you Google "psychology blogs" you'll get a start and then you get links/leads to others you might find interesting.

for example,
Psychology Today
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry
Jung at Heart
PsyBlog
one of my favorites, Tony White: Graffiti
posted by hulahulagirl at 1:25 PM on April 17, 2008

If your're interested in Freud or Jung, my recent AskMefi has some book recommendations
posted by majikstreet at 1:39 PM on April 17, 2008

You mention a couple books in the field of positive psychology. There was a recent post about the now-famous Harvard positive psychology course with a link to the lecture videos. I've watched the lectures, and while they don't talk much about experimental methods they're well worth a view.
posted by FissionChips at 6:15 PM on April 17, 2008