I'm taking an intro to psychology class at honors level my senior year which starts in 2 weeks(help)......?

Question

What can I study during these to weeks to get a head start? What should I learn?

Answer 1

Investigate these people and become familiar with their names:

Aaron Beck

Sigmund Freud

Carl Rogers

Piaget

B.F. Skinner

Watson

Irvin Yalom

The concepts and contributions of these significant researchers are usually the main emphasis of an intro class because these are more or less the founding fathers of the profession.  Once you are familiar with their names and eras, you will absorb info about their theories much more efficiently and comprehensibly.  Enjoy!

Answer 2

For a real start on the topic of psychology, you will want to read up on Dr. Alfred Adler, who created Individual Psychology 100 years ago. His name may not be familiar yet, but his ideas are well known to you already:

Marriage, family, and group counseling: He created them

Parenting education: He created it

Cognitive therapy: He created it (Not Aaron Beck, not Albert Ellis!)

And these are just a few of his concepts:

Goal orientation

Psychology as holistic

Purposiveness of human behavior

Human beings are created by the human community

The centrality of the family on personality

Reverse psychology/prescribing the symptom

Family constellation

Birth order, sibling rivalry

Inferiority complex/superiority complex

Compensation/over-compensation

Aggression Drive

Masculine protest

Life Style

Family atmosphere

...the list goes on and on.

Interesting, the list of famous psychologists given by Missy T...half of those she listed were students of Adler! And the long discussion of Maslow by j153e......yes, once again, Maslow was a long-time personal  friend and student of Adler. Here's the web link you need:

http://www.lifecourseinstitute.com

Answer 3

Reverse psychology. What you do is: not study. That way you learn a lot.

Answer 4

Can you get a copy of the text book?

Work on increasing your general knowledge and vocabulary.  You can buy study guides for that at any biggo book store.

Answer 5

Missy T's advice is sound.  I.e., there are a few basic and main concepts associated with e.g. S. Freud.  Find the relevant wikipedia entry/entries, make a list of the 1-10 most important phrases for Freud, Jung, Adler, Watson, Skinner, et al.  You should have no more than 100, basically, and those given in 5-10 words or maybe more.  How you relate to, or "learn," these, is how well your foundation provides you with awareness and affect re their use.  Like a foreign language, the 100 or so concepts/ideas give you the ability to communicate with others, to "feel comfortable" or "at home" with the jargon/idea set of modern psychology.  One strategy, if you're able to print the wikipedia articles, then highlight the (few) really main ideas, then put each on paper/index card.  The point of genuine learning is more relaxed, able to use the idea(s) in a similar context, recognize them in different wordings, etc.  Then, these in turn act as conceptual focuses which permit more detailed or complex or finer concept-building.  (A general neuroscience teaching.)

Abraham Maslow's "Theory-Z." and his general life's work is perhaps most relevant.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages...

has some emphasis on Theory-Z.

The basic import of Theory-Z is that consciousness, finding harmony and perspective among two polarities, advances.  This is an example of self-actualization.

Self-actualization is the good fruit of fulfilling, attaining, vis a vis the "hierarchy of needs."  What Maslow found, in longitudinal studies of self-actualizers, is that a Guiding Principle, Ideal, or Higher Power is necessary, as a rudder, for about 95+% of self-actualizers--those who regularly and successfully meet needs such as water, food, exercise, social kindness and approval, and then continue to individuate victoriously.

This concept is a basic and rather easy one to understand.  Realizing, applying, and living its wisdom is more challenging.

Psychology has tended to become more reductionist and experimentalist, to the point of reducing or ignoring the Soul or Higher Power as a part of the human spirit.  In this sense, the human animal is the whole focus, and the Soul is not considered important in psyche-ology, the "word or knowing of the soul."

Thus, Maslow offers a fairly rare "way up and out," a connection to God, and a demonstrably more holistic vision of the human experience, a general and useful thread thoughout the whole of psychology, which has many diverse teachings.

Other interesting studies which help this perspective:

http://www.integralscience.org

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10

http://www.quantumbrain.org

http://www.sheldrake.org

http://www.noetic.org

are some interesting sites.

http://www.prisonexp.org (click on "Begin slide show") is worthwhile as classical social psychology experiment.

"Mindset," Dr. Carol Dweck, is a good recent (2007) readable book on a major self-blocking problem.  Her work with athletes, inventors, etc. is outstanding.

"Emotions," Marilyn C. Barrick, Ph.D., is also worthwhile.

Answer 6

I took the same thing last year.  It was a lot of fun, but its stuff you really need a teacher to help teach.  Don't worry about getting a head, just stay on top of everything when the class starts.

It should be lots of fun!!

MY SENIOR YEAR STARTS IN 2 WEEKS TOO!! IM SO EXCITED

Answer 7

Well Im just starting so I really cant help. I find alot of information in my browsing time in the internet on wikipedia.com. I would say just brush up on everything you learned and for anything extra go there. Wikipedia is the s$#t.