About this item
An original history of psychology told through the stories of its most important breakthroughs and the people who made themAdvances in psychology have revolutionized our understanding of the human mind. Imaging technology allows researchers to monitor brain activity, letting us see what happens when we perceive, think, and feel. But technology is only part of how ideas about the mind and brain have developed over the past century and a half. In Our Minds, Our Selves, distinguished psychologist and writer Keith Oatley provides an engaging, original, and authoritative history of modern psychology told through the stories of its most important breakthroughs and the men and women who made them. Our Minds, Our Selves traverses a fascinating terrain: forms of conscious and unconscious knowledge; brain physiology; emotion; stages of mental development from infancy to adulthood; language acquisition and use; the nature of memory; mental illness; morality; free will; creativity; the mind at work in art and literature; and, most important, our ability to cooperate with one another.
About the Author
Keith Oatley is professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. His research is on emotion, and on the psychology of fiction. He is the author of six books of psychology, most recently Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction (2011, Wiley-Blackwell) . He is also the author of three novels. The first of these--in which Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes work on the same case--The Case of Emily V. (Secker & Warburg) , won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (1994) for Best First Novel. His most recent novel Therefore Choose (2010, Goose Lane Editions) is about making choices when we can't predict the outcomes. Keith organizes and writes for a blog on the psychology of fiction, www.onfiction.ca and he reviews movies for PsycCritiques. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
