The Great Ideas of Psychology – The Great Courses

Anyone who engages these texts will either revolutionize their worldview to a more accurate picture of the universe around us; or at the very least will have his/her worldview fleshed out with most of the major contours that direct our lives.

1. Cosmos – Niel DeGrass Tyson or Carl Sagan (TV Show)
2. A Theory of Everything – Ken Wilber (Book)
3. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson (Audio Book)
4. The Great Ideas of Psychology – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)
5. 12 Essential Scientific Concepts – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)

Why these five pieces of information are so powerful in enhancing our big picture view:

Anyone who hasn’t read, listened to, or watched these four pieces of information should short track them to the top of the reading and watching list. Personally, I would recommend these different works be taken in through different mediums for optimal benefits.

4. The Great Ideas of Psychology: The Great Courses – Back to the internal, mental, subjective, side of the coin. This course give a comprehensive overview of all the most important ideas that we’ve learned about human psychology. As a science, psychology is one of the newest to the scene. It wasn’t really until the late 1800’s that people started turning their analytical skills, and the scientific method, to the mysteries of the human mind.

This beautiful lecture series does for our view of the mind what Bryson’s work does for our understanding of the physical universe. By listening to this series, a person will have an ideal orientation for all the different subfields of psychology and also how psychology evolved over time.

Each subfield has emerged out of a particular context. It then added ideas to the greater body of knowledge but focused on a particular way of studying. The most obvious example is that of behaviorism and then the cognitive revolution. Behaviorism is as close to scientific positivism as possible in the world of psychology. This means the philosophy behind behaviorism was to only look at objectively measurable aspects of the environment and behavior; theories about the mind, values, beliefs, and mental models have no room in the behaviorist’s laboratory.

The cognitive revolution of the 1960’s flew right in the face of this. We later found that we simply can’t understand the complexities and nuances of the human mind without considering how ideas are represented in our minds. And since our minds cannot be measured in any objective sense, then how can we test and check hypotheses scientifically? These questions and more are addressed in this excellent series.

Limitations – Not much to complain about here. It really leads us through the development of the field of psychology. It makes clear why each field was so strong and prevailing throughout each period of history and also why the next evolution both addressed the shortcomings of the previous era while presenting new shortcomings of its own. This is the perfect overview for understanding the contours of the mind. If there’s any complaint it’s that one could never remember everything at once.

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