Developmental Psychology Books

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

Spencer Johnson

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: G. P. Putnam's Sons Amazon Marketplace: 1141 new & used starting at $0.94

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Organizational Behavior -> Workplace
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1445 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are "littlepeople," mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It's not just sustenance to them; it's their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they've found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

Dr. Johnson, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and many other books, presents this parable to business, church groups, schools, military organizations--anyplace where you find people who may fear or resist change. And although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Things change. They always have changed and always will change. And while there's no single way to deal with change, the consequence of pretending change won't happen is always the same: The cheese runs out. --Lou Schuler

Development Through the Lifespan (4th Edition) (MyDevelopmentLab Series)

Laura E. Berk

Amazon Price: $92.02 List Price: $132.80 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Allyn & Bacon Amazon Marketplace: 118 new & used starting at $85.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> Aging -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Child Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Annotated Instructor's Edition - Same Attractive Cover 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 16 people found this review helpful.

The instructor's edition is ISBN 0-205-19291-2. The book and the additional instructor's pages are very comprehensive. In addition, there is a web site that supports the book - abacon.com/berk. The text covers human development at all stages of the human lifespan with many illustrations and high-quality paper and comprehensive writing. This beautiful book is available on the Amazon Marketplace for just a few dollars which is an excellent value.

Editorial Review:

Renowned professor and scholar Laura Berk has heightened emphasis on the lifespan perspective, expanded cross-cultural and multicultural research, and strengthened links between theory, research, and applications. Along with the theme of lifelong development, the book emphasizes (1) interdisciplinary contributions to the study of development, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, education, biology, and other fields; (2) the multidimensional nature of development-physical, cognitive, emotional, and social; (3) interacting contextual influences on development-biological, psychological, social, community, cultural, and historical; and (4) gender differences. For anyone interested in lifespan or human development.

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

David R. Hawkins

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hay House Amazon Marketplace: 135 new & used starting at $4.86

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 237 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Profound Yet Flawed 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a very good book and the core of it is valuable and amazing, however there are some flaws in the kinesiological method and results, and some annoying generalizations 'metal music makes one go weak' without saying what specific music was being tested. When doing kinesiological or energy testing, one must be very specific about the subject of the test. Also, one's personal feelings and mentation can at times override proper testing (this is why he says one has to be at '300' or above to get proper results).
Dr. Hawkins has done us a great service with his research however, and seems to be very sincere. The levels of consciousness diagram is worth the price of admission.

Editorial Review:

David R. Hawkins details how anyone may resolve the most crucial of all human dilemmas: how to instantly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement or supposed fact. Dr. Hawkins, who worked as a "healing psychiatrist" during his long and distinguished career, uses theoretical concepts from particle physics, nonlinear dynamics, and chaos theory to support his study of human behavior. This is a fascinating work that will intrigue readers from all walks of life!

Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence

David Keirsey

Amazon Price: $10.04 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prometheus Nemesis Book Company Amazon Marketplace: 137 new & used starting at $6.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 118 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This is the WRONG EDITION to buy! 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 8 people found this review helpful.

The second edition is so bad, the name should be changed to "Pretty Please Understand Me, Despite My Poor Writing."

Mark Twain once wrote "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead." A good editor cuts down. Unfortunately, Kiersey's originally brilliant book took the opposite direction. The first edition of Please Understand Me was lucid, and at the same time enigmatic. The second edition, almost twice the page count, was so diffuse, it appeared to have been written by committee.

I didn't understand it.

It appeared that Kiersey was not so interested in persuading the reader of the book's thesis, but more interested in paying homage to the great-great-great-grandfathers of typing theory. Kiersey tediously attempted to stretch and squeeze the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Paracelsus, Adickes, Spranger, Kretschmer, Fromm and Myers to match each other, and boiled them all down to the same thing: that there are four broad categories of personality types. It was a little like hearing an argument that the Spanish word for crocodile and the Filipino word for alligator are referring to the same animal. It left me unconvinced.

The book then diverged into one chapter for each of the four temperaments. Here, instead of four coherent chapters, I felt like I was leafing through four drawers of a filing cabinet where a researcher had thrown scraps of trivia about each temperament, and then just belched them out. The treatment of each temperament was therefore illogical and unbelievably long. And of course I had to endure not one description of a temperament, but about five names for the same temperament from Paracelsus to Jung to Myers, blah, blah, blah. I lost interest even when I was reading about my own personality type. (Maybe the chapter should have mentioned, "You are the type who falls asleep when reading a chapter about yourself full of things that are not true."

RAY OF LIGHT

So I tried the first edition. The first edition was a collaboration of Kiersey and Bates. Perhaps Bates was the copy editing half of the duo. At less than 200 pages, the first edition is a perfect example of a book that can sell millions of copies.

Understandable, concise, and lucid. The first edition takes a complicated theory (and any typing theory would have to be complicated to do humans justice) and makes it usable. Because it makes the system workable, Kiersey & Bates and Myers & Briggs are indispensible to each other. The second chapter of the first edition is the most useful 30 pages ever written in the field.


SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Personality typing is an old idea, but strangely, I believe that it is in its infancy. In my view, the problems with the second edition illustrate the reasons why this fascinating field is only barely on the verge of finding its legs.

Personality typing is a field where too many people are selling the theory and too few are developing it.

You can't prove a theory by showing that the theory is old. To seriously convince anyone, you prove the theory through social scientific methods.

To those who would argue that these theories are not scientifically provable, I would argue that personality typing should be more available to scientific investigation than almost any other field of social science, because it is based on the simple concept: "By knowing a person's type we can anticipate rather accurately what he will do most of the time." (First Edition, p. 27.) If you can predict what a particular person will do, then you can create experiments to test whether the prediction is true. That's the foundation of scientific theory. And without that, Myers-Briggs is no different from astrology or palm reading. But I believe it is.

My readings have always vaguely suggested that Myers and Briggs established their theory through experimentation, but I have seen no real description of the experiments or their findings. So maybe this data does exist, but it's just not frequently discussed. (Please comment to this review and give me the sources so I can educate myself.)

If the data is out there, I have two criticisms. First, I believe that Myers Briggs suffers from inadequate P.R., because many people would be more likely to believe it if they understood the clinical work behind it. That Aristotle allegedly thought about it first doesn't make the theory true. Second, if Myers-Briggs is a scientific theory, then it should be developed like all scientific theories -- with more experimentation on an ongoing basis. And I don't think that ongoing experimentation is going on, which is a shame.

I suspect that people are not developing this worthy theory because personality typing is an easy sell on the seminar circuit, similar to many types of pseudo-science that corporate management types seem to gobble up. And something tells me that this theory holds more for the human race than the promise of consulting fees.

Development Across the Life Span (5th Edition) (MyDevelopmentLab Series)

Robert S. Feldman

Amazon Price: $85.00 List Price: $122.67 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $84.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Personal Health -> Aging -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Child Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

This is not the textbook just a study guide. 1 out of 5 stars.
8 of 19 people found this review helpful.

If you are looking for the text book for this course you are looking at the wrong book. All the reviews listed under this book speak glowingly of Feldman's approach to the subject but unless you are careful you will miss that they are talking about the hard cover textbook. This study guide may be helpful but only if you have the full text. Beware what you are buying.

Editorial Review:

For classes in lifespan development.

Development Across the Lifespan offers students a chronological overview of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development–from conception through death. It presents up-to-date coverage of theory and research, with an emphasis on the application of these concepts by students in their personal–and future professional–lives. The text taps into students’ inherent interest in the subject of human development, encouraging them to draw connections between the material and their own experiences.

Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types

David Keirsey, Marilyn Bates

Amazon Price: $9.67 List Price: $11.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prometheus Nemesis Book Company Amazon Marketplace: 348 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Relationships -> Interpersonal Relations
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Does your spouse's need to alphabetically organize books on the shelves puzzle you? Do your boss's tsunami-like moods leave you exasperated? Do your child's constant questions make you batty? If you've ever wanted to change your mate, your coworkers, or a family member, then "Put down your chisel," advise David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates in this book of personality types. We are different for a reason, and that reason is probably more good than bad. Keirsey and Bates believe that not only is it impossible to truly change others (which they call embarking on a "Pygmalion project"), it's much more important to understand and affirm differences. Sounds easier than it is, you might say. Well, this book is a guide for putting an end to the Pygmalion projects in your life and starting on the path to acceptance.

For anyone acquainted with the ubiquitous Myers-Briggs personality test, Please Understand Me will be familiar territory--but gone over with a fine-toothed comb. And for the uninitiated, this book will be a quick introduction to personality typing the Myers-Briggs way--with a Jungian accent. After presenting a brief rundown of 20th-century psychology movements, Keirsey and Bates encourage you to take the 70-question "Keirsey Temperament Sorter," a sort of mini-Myers-Briggs test that places you in 1 of 16 personality types. Like the Myers-Briggs system, this test sorts your personality into groups of extraversion/introversion (E/I), sensation/intuition (S/N), thinking/feeling (T/F), and perceiving/judging (P/J). Unlike the Myers-Briggs system, Please Understand Me also presents four easy-to-remember temperament types--Dionysian (freedom first), Epimethean (wants to be useful), Promethean (desires power), and Apollonian (searches for self)--that underlie the 16 possible personalities identified by the test. The book then delves into a detailed analysis of each type, with sections on mates, children, and leaders. An appendix paints portraits of the 16 possible personality types.

Unless you're already a true personality-typing devotee, this book may seem a little esoteric, especially the somewhat "in" references to psychological theory that few laypeople will be likely to understand. But give it a chance and you may find that you'll begin to understand why you always know where to find Anna Karenina on the shelf (you have an ESTJ husband), why your boss is sarcastic one day and praises your achievements the next (she's an NF), and why knowing the reason that the sun comes up in the same place every day is important to your little one (he's Promethean). You may even find that once you accept quirks and ticks in others, they will understand you a little better, too. --Stefanie Durbin

The Highly Sensitive Person

Elaine N. Aron Ph.D.

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Books Amazon Marketplace: 136 new & used starting at $2.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Self-Esteem
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Are you an HSP? Are you easily overwhelmed by stimuli? Affected by other people's moods? Easily startled? Do you need to withdraw during busy times to a private, quiet place? Do you get nervous or shaky if someone is observing you or competing with you? HSP, shorthand for "highly sensitive person," describes 15 to 20 percent of the population. Being sensitive is a normal trait--nothing defective about it. But you may not realize that, because society rewards the outgoing personality and treats shyness and sensitivity as something to be overcome. According to author Elaine Aron (herself an HSP), sensitive people have the unusual ability to sense subtleties, spot or avoid errors, concentrate deeply, and delve deeply. This book helps HSPs to understand themselves and their sensitive trait and its impact on personal history, career, relationships, and inner life. The book offers advice for typical problems. For example, you learn strategies for coping with overarousal, overcoming social discomfort, being in love relationships, managing job challenges, and much more. The author covers a lot of material clearly, in an approachable style, using case studies, self-tests, and exercises to bring the information home. The book is essential for you if you are an HSP--you'll learn a lot about yourself. It's also useful for people in a relationship with an HSP. --Joan Price

The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson

Amazon Price: $14.28 List Price: $21.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bantam Amazon Marketplace: 85 new & used starting at $9.34

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Personality

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Positive Book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the most positive books on the enneagram by these authors. It's easy to read yet insightful. Best of all, the positive traits of each personality type are highlighted.

Editorial Review:

Recommended by two highly credible authorities, consciousness explorer Ken Wilber and spiritual-growth guru Harville Hendrix, this compendium of Enneagram information was assembled by the cofounders of the Enneagram Institute as an introduction to the subject. Designed with a plenitude of charts, boxes, and quotes (by noted illuminaries such as A.H. Almaas, Maya Angelou, and G.I. Gurjieff), this exceptionally easy-to-use, manual-size paperback teaches the reader how to figure out which of the nine types she is, identifies red flags to self-illusion, and provides practical suggestions for spiritual growth. Advice on how to observe your type's fixations and let go of the need to act out automatic and dysfunctional behavioral responses are down-to-earth and attainable. A distinctly accessible approach to cultivating daily happiness through understanding the complexity of fixations that weave together human personality types. --Randall Cohan

Infants, Children, and Adolescents (6th Edition) (MyDevelopmentLab Series)

Laura E. Berk

Amazon Price: $106.24 List Price: $132.80 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Allyn & Bacon Amazon Marketplace: 83 new & used starting at $89.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Adolescent Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Child Psychology -> Development
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Editorial Review:

Berk’s signature storytelling style invites students to actively learn beside the text’s “characters” who share their influential experiences and developmental milestones. Students are provided with an exceptionally clear and coherent understanding of child development, emphasizing the interrelatedness of all domains—physical, cognitive, emotional, and social—throughout the text narrative and in special features. Focusing on education and social policy as critical pieces of the dynamic system in which the child develops, Berk pays meticulous attention to the most recent scholarship in the field. Berk helps students connect their learning to their personal and professional areas of interest and their future pursuits as parents, educators, heath care providers, social workers, and researchers. Theory and Research in Child Development, Foundations of Development, Infancy and Toddlerhood: the First Two years, Early Childhood: Two to Six Years, Middle Childhood: Six to Eleven Years, Adolescence: The Transition to Adulthood Child Development, Child and Adolescent Development

Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives

Laura C. Schlessinger

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 693 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Success
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is the incredibly popular and controversial psychotherapist who hosts a nationally syndicated, top-rated midday radio talk show. She has strong convictions and doesn't hesitate to voice them to callers. She urges women emphatically to lose a domineering jerk of a lover and pick one of the "good guys," to stay home and parent the babies they've made, and to follow the dream rather than some dreamboat. Above all, she exhorts women not to blame anybody or anything but themselves if they're unhappy and their lives seem a mess.

10 Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives uses real-world examples from Schlessinger's radio show and private practice to drive the message home. And the message is that our reticence to be bold and brave often makes us act like stupid, submissive victims. Once we muster the courage to take responsibility for our own problems and to tolerate the discomforts of risk, the possibilities for personal growth and joy are limitless.

If you're looking for an all-approving hand to hold, you won't find it here. If you're prepared to take a clear-eyed look at your self-diminishing behavior and to make the move to a quality existence, there's no one better than Schlessinger to keep you honest and to cheer you on. One thing's for sure: You'll never look at your relationships, behaviors and decisions the same way after you've finished reading this book.