Psychology in Minutes

Amazing book with brief history and overview of different psychological terms

This book provides an excellent overview of key ideas from western psychology in a bite-size format. There's a limit to how much depth a book of this size can go into, but in my opinion makes efficient use of the available space.Here's a very brief summary of key points:• Psychology is about mind and behavior of people and animals.• We can do experiments to learn more about mind and behavior.• Mind is somewhat hidden and the subjective experience of consciousness is mysterious.• There are various models of mind. A basic distinction is between conscious and subconscious aspects. The mind also has modes like dreaming.• Our subconscious minds incorporate biased and fallible heuristics.• When mind doesn’t function well or causes subjective distress, we say there’s mental disorder. This can be addressed by talking therapy, behavior changes, and supplements/meds.• People naturally form groups, which provide benefits to people but can also be dysfunctional and oppressive towards their members and other groups.• Individual sense of self, thoughts, behavior, manifest intelligence, and manifest personality are highly influenced by the sociocultural and situational context. These influences can be quite negative, leading to a maladaptive sense of self, psychopathology, impaired performance, and harmful behaviors.• Flow enables us to escape the sense of self and be in the moment.• Memory and perception are fairly complex and fallible.• In addition to survival and reproduction instincts, we may also have a death instinct. But we also have motives to pursue higher goals like meaning, purpose, and self-actualization.• Emotions tend to be intertwined with thoughts and bodily responses, and lead to moods.

This book provides an 'easy to read' introduction to fundamental concepts within psychology. It would be useful to readers who are new to psychology and also graduate psychologists in need of a very brief revision of key theory. There is little room for analysis of each topic but instead explanations are focussed and sharp.

Dot not believe the title! Although it is quite small, it is thick and there is substantial content. The trouble with Psychology is that there are few hard and definite facts like many sciences.

The item is very good and very valued

These "snapshot" books are very educating, and very easy to read. Would like more topics covered.

Ok