Overview

Get an accessible yet amazing introduction to a complex subject led by a renowned professor.

Today’s psychologist is apt to be very different from the image most people conjure up when asked to picture one—an image that almost always suggests Sigmund Freud or someone like him, complete with leather couch. But as indebted as they may be to Freud’s landmark explorations of our psychological landscape, modern psychologists are involved in far more than helping people cope with their inner demons. Instead, they are working in areas that now encompass every part of the process by which we develop and function as people:

• How we perceive, remember, and learn

• How we select our friends and partners and retain their affection and love

• The things that motivate us

Now you can gain a basic introduction to psychology—beginning with its historical context and looking ahead to some of the directions it is likely to take in the future—in this fascinating series of 36 lectures from an acclaimed teacher and author. It explores all of the many new areas that now fit comfortably beneath psychology’s umbrella and the sophisticated new research methods that have emerged. These lectures are both an excellent summary of a transformed profession and an ideal starting point for those eager to expand their understanding of the human mind.

Course Structure

01: Modern Psychology in Historical Context

This lecture introduces psychology as the study of human behavior either from a clinical or scientific perspective—with several examples of the varieties of approaches each may take—and also traces some of the discipline’s history. (33 min)

02: Experimentation as a Research Method

Experimentation is one of the primary research methods of psychology. This lecture shows how properly conducted experiments are set up and explains the key terms used. (30 min)

03: Nonexperimental Research Methods

Psychological researchers are not confined to experimentation in doing their work. We look at some of the other methods available, beginning with correlational observation, in which researchers attempt to determine whether there is a relationship between two behaviors. (31 min)

04: Evolutionary Theory and Modern Psychology

During most of the history of psychology, human behavior has been considered to be largely a function of environmental influences with few innate behaviors. This lecture explores the recent trend to view behavior within an evolutionary context. (31 min)

05: Freud’s Thinking

We look at psychology’s most prominent theory of personality: the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud around 1900, which set forth the three personality components of id, ego, and superego. (30 min)

06: Details of Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud proposed that psychosexual energy is focused on various anatomical parts during a series of developmental stages, and that there are unconscious defense mechanisms at work to protect our psyches. Are his ideas still useful? (31 min)

07: Classification of Mental Illnesses

This lecture begins a five-lecture exploration of mental illness, beginning with a look at the various criteria used to make up the multidimensional definition of abnormal behavior. (31 min)

08: Anxiety and Mood Disorders

Two of the major classifications of mental illness are anxiety—once called neurosis—and mood disorders. This lecture discusses some of the major examples of each and discusses how modern psychology attempts to treat them. (31 min)

09: Disorders of Brain, Body, Self, Drugs, Sex

There are several categories of mental disorders—cognitive, somatoform, disassociative, substance-related, and sexual—and varieties of treatment. (31 min)

10: Schizophrenic Disorders

Occurring in only 1 percent of the population, schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder in which there is a break with reality that nearly always involves both positive symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech and behaviors; and negative symptoms such as emotional flattening, lessened speech, or deficient will. (31 min)

11: Childhood, Retardation, Personality Disorders

We conclude our introduction to mental illness by looking at attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, mental retardation, and types of personality disorders. (30 min)

12: Physical Therapies-Drugs

This lecture begins our examination of physically oriented therapies with an examination of various psychopharmacological interventions, including a primer on how drugs work once they reach our nervous system. (31 min)

13: Physical Therapies-ECT, Surgery, Genes

Several physical interventions besides drugs have been used to treat mental illnesses. This lecture looks at some of them, beginning with chemical and electrical means of introducing convulsions and continuing on to discuss surgical and genetic approaches to treatment. (32 min)

14: Talking Therapies-Psychoanalysis

Psychotherapies are talking therapies based on the assumption that behavioral problems are caused by inappropriate thoughts and feelings. This lecture focuses on the therapy Freud developed, based on his own landmark psychoanalytic theory, to help patients find out what the contents of the unconscious are so that the unconscious can be restructured. (31 min)

15: Therapies-Humanistic, Cognitive, Group

This lecture continues the sequence on talking therapies by looking at approaches other than traditional psychoanalysis that have proven useful. (31 min)

16: Behavior Therapies-Classical Conditioning

Behavior therapies are based upon the assumption that the client has learned an inappropriate way of responding. The goal of behavior therapies based on classical conditioning is to substitute a new appropriate response for the old inappropriate response and strengthen the new stimulus-response connection to eliminate the old response. (30 min)

17: Behavior Therapies-Operant Conditioning

Some behavior therapies (sometimes called behavior modification) are based upon operant conditioning, a form of simple learning that occurs when a voluntary response is reinforced, thereby making that response more likely to recur. (31 min)

18: Models of Motivation

“What motivates human behavior?” Historically, answers to this question have ranged from the gods to biological systems to the unconscious. This lecture introduces some of the answers that have intrigued psychologists. (31 min)

19: Emotion-What Do We Measure?

Emotion is one of the most important things for psychologists to study, but it is particularly difficult to do so because emotions are private events and not publicly observable. What can be measured, though, are emotion’s by-products. (31 min)

20: Emotion-Theories

What are emotions, anyway? Are they the cause of a physiological response or the result? We look at some of the theories proposed over the years to explain them. (31 min)

21: Psychoactive Drugs-Processes, Stimulants

Legal or not, most people use psychoactive drugs to change the way they feel or act. We begin our examination with a discussion of how such drugs work and a look at some of the more common stimulants, including caffeine, nicotine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy. (30 min)

22: Drugs-Depressants, Narcotics, Hallucinogens

We turn to other kinds of psychoactive drugs, beginning with depressants—the most dangerous class of drugs because of the risk of death that comes with their use. (31 min)

23: Social Psychology-Influence and Reciprocity

This lecture, the first of two on social psychology, is concerned with social thinking, social influence, and social relations. We examine the phenomenon of reciprocity as a “triggering mechanism” to persuade others. (31 min)

24: Social Psychology-Additional Mechanisms

Reciprocity is far from being the only triggering mechanism. This lecture examines some of the others, including commitment, social proof, authority, and scarcity. (31 min)

25: Simple Learning-Classical Conditioning

We begin a two-lecture sequence on simple learning with a deeper look into a subject introduced earlier and discovered by Ivan Pavlov as he was studying glandular processes in dogs. (32 min)

26: Simple Learning-Operant Conditioning

We conclude our discussion of simple learning with an examination of the kind of learning that takes place when a voluntary response is reinforced—a process famously pioneered by B. F. Skinner. (31 min)

27: Complex Learning

This lecture examines several forms of complex learning, along with the argument that it cannot simply be built from the building blocks of classical and operant conditioning. Our discussion will include the differing views put forth by B. F. Skinner and linguist Noam Chomsky. (31 min)

28: Memory-Characteristics

We begin our examination of memory with a look at the various ways of assessing how much we remember and conclude with a discussion of memory’s fidelity and the ease with which false memories can be implanted for later recall. (31 min)

29: Memory-Memory Aids and Forgetting Theories

Are there ways to improve our memories? Why, in fact, do we forget? We look at both of these issues and spend some time exploring mnemonics, or memory aids. (30 min)

30: Perception-Forming Internal Models

Humans are not in direct contact with the external world, but pick up cues as to what is in the external world and form internal models from these cues. This lecture looks at how we do this, as well as how we can be deceived. (31 min)

31: Perception-Finding and Organizing Cues

This lecture continues our examination of perception with a look at several different analyses, including those of the Gestalt and perceptual constancy schools and the work of Dale Purves. (31 min)

32: Evolutionary Psychology-Basic Concepts

Because behaviorists and their blank-slate concept of learning held sway for many years, it is only recently that the theory of evolution has had an impact on psychology. But since the subfield of evolutionary psychology was founded in the 1990s, its impact has become major. (31 min)

33: Evolutionary Psychology-Altruism and Mating

What evolutionary advantage would accrue to helping others? Is our evolutionary wiring still determining how we choose our partners? We explore these provocative questions. (31 min)

34: Evolutionary Psychology-War, Family, Food

This lecture examines the ways evolutionary psychology can help explain some of the problems with aggression, parenting, and overeating in today’s world. (30 min)

35: Engineering Psychology

Engineering psychology is concerned with specifying the characteristics and limitations of the human operator in a human-and-machine environment. This lecture looks at the branch of psychology that is part of the interdisciplinary area of human factors, or ergonomics. (31 min)

36: Recap, Omissions, and Into the Future

This final lecture reviews what we have covered in the course and looks into the future to see what may yet be made possible by psychology’s most cutting-edge approaches. (31 min)