More Examples, Less Theory: Historical Studies of Writing Psychology
Cambridge University Press, 9/30/2019
EAN 9781108736022, ISBN10: 1108736025
Paperback, 294 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
In his new book, Michael Billig uses psychology's past to argue that nowadays, when we write about the mind, we should use more examples and less theory. He provides a series of historical studies, analysing how key psychological writers used examples. Billig offers new insights about famous analysts of the mind, such as Locke, James, Freud, Tajfel and Lewin. He also champions unfairly forgotten figures, like the Earl of Shaftesbury and the eccentric Abraham Tucker. There is a cautionary chapter on Lacan, warning what can happen when examples are ignored. Marie Jahoda is praised as the ultimate example: a psychologist from the twentieth century with a social and rhetorical imagination fit for the twenty-first. More Examples, Less Theory is an easy-to-read book that will inform and entertain academics and their students. It will particularly appeal to those who enjoy the details of examples rather than the simplifications of big theory.
1. Introduction
2. Locke and Shaftesbury
foster father and foster son
3. Tucker and James
in the same stream of thought
4. Freud
writing to reveal and conceal himself
5. Lacan
an ego in pursuit of the ego
6. Lewin
is there nothing as practical as a good example?
7. Tajfel and Bernstein
the limits of theory
8. Jahoda
the ultimate example
9. Concluding remarks.