The Great Ideas of Psychology

Course Number 660 48 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by: Professor Daniel N. Robinson -- Oxford University and Columbia
University
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Lectures
Part I: Foundations and Psychology in the Empiricist Tradition
Lecture 1: Defining the Subject
Lecture 2: Ancient Foundations Greek Philosophers and Physicians
Lecture 3: Minds Possessed -- Witchery and the Search for Explan
ations
Lecture
" Theory of Mind
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erialism
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Egginbhaus
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4: The Emergence of Modern Science -- Locke's "Newtonian

5: Three Enduring "isms" -- Empiricism, Rationalism, Mat
6: Sensation and Perception
7: The Visual Process
8: Hearing
9: Signal-Detection Theory
10: Perceptual Constancies and Illusions
11: Learning and Memory: Associationism -- Aristotle to
12: Pavlov and the Conditioned Reflex

Part II: Psychology and the Empiricist Tradition (cont'd) and Psychology
and
the Rationalist Tradition
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Watson and American Behaviorism

B.F. Skinner and Modern Behaviorism
B.F. Skinner and the Engineering of Society
Language
The Integration of Experience
Perception and Attention
Cognitive "Maps," "Insight," and Animal Minds
Memory Revisited -- Mnemonics and Context
Piaget's Stage Theory of Cognitive Development
The Development of Moral Reasoning
Knowledge, Thinking, and Understanding
Comprehending the World of Experience -- Cognition S

ummarized
Part III: Psychology and the Rationalist Tradition (cont'd) and Psycholo
gy
in the Materialist Tradition
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Psychobiology -- Nineteenth-Century Foundations

Language and the Brain
Rationality, Problem-Solving, and Brain Function
The "Emotional" Brain -- The Limbic System
Violence and the Brain
Psychopathology - The Medical Model

Lecture 31: Artificial Intelligence and the Neurocognitive Revol

ution
Lecture 32: Is Artificial Intelligence "Intelligent"?
Lecture 33: What Makes an Event "Social"?
Lecture 34: Socialization: Darwin and the "Natural History" Meth
od
Lecture 35: Freud's Debt to Darwin
Lecture 36: Freud, Breuer, and the Theory of Repression
Part IV: Psychology and the Social Context (cont'd) and Enduring Issues
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Freud's Theory of Psychosexual Development

Critiques of Freudian Theory
What Is Personality?
Obedience and Conformity
Altruism
Prejudice and Self-Deception
On Being Sane in Insane Places
Intelligence
Personality Traits and the Problem of Assessment
Genetic Psychology and "The Bell Curve"
Psychological and Biological Determinism
Civic Development -- Psychology, the Person, and the

Polis
The Great Ideas of Psychology
This course is for the "seeker" in you: your need to know, your willingn
ess
to self-examine, your restless curiosity about the world around you.
If you ve ever wanted to understand more about your emotions, your cogniti
ve
thinking skills, and other traits that make you uniquely human, then
experience The Great Ideas of Psychology.
This is a fascinating and provocative course -- a joyride of ideas,
speculations, and point-blank moral questions that might just dismantle
and
rebuild everything you once thought you knew about psychology -- not jus
t what
psychology is, but even if it is!
To listen to these lectures is to hear the entire history of psychology
unfold and to know that the subject most of us today associate with name
s
like Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner really began thousands of years
earlier.
You ll meet Freud, Skinner, Jung, Watson, Piaget, Erikson, and other figur
es
of the modern history of psychology. But you ll also encounter Plato and
Aristotle. Locke and Hume. Bacon, Newton, Galileo, and Descartes. You ll
sail to the Galapagos Islands with Darwin. Share an intimate corresponde
nce
between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Psychologists all.
Indeed the lectures embrace so diverse a spectrum of thinkers and subjec
ts

that you might find it hard to believe you re taking just a "psychology"
course.