A Critical History of Psychology: From Antiquity to Modernity

This fully updated and refreshed 9th edition places social, economic and political forces of change alongside psychology’s internal theoretical and empirical arguments. It utilises a critical lens to illuminate the way in which the external world has shaped the development of psychology and, in turn, how psychology from antiquity to modernity has shaped society.

The text approaches the material from an integrative, rather than wholly linear, perspective, carefully examining how issues in psychology reflect and affect concepts that lie outside the field of psychology’s technical concerns as a science and profession.

Key features of this edition include:

• A newly reconsidered structure, including five additional interludes exploring historical background narratives and the rise of modernity, to allow for flexible and adaptable textbook use.
• Expanded exploration of the two psychologies: the Way of Ideas, driven by epistemology and unique to Europe, and The Way of Human Nature, a universal concern to find a science of human behavior and its management.

Including scientific, applied, and professional psychology, as well as coverage of the social sciences and social policy implications, this book is appropriate for high level undergraduate and graduate students.

Thomas Hardy Leahey received a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the direction of William F. Brewer. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. He has been President of the Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of APA), and Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24 of the APA). He is also author of Fundamentals of Cognitive Science and co-author (with Grace Leahey) of Psychology’s Occult Doubles: Psychology and the Problem of pseudoscience. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.