A Textbook of Psychology

A TEXTBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. By D. 0. Hebb. Philadelphia and London, W. B. Saunders Co., 1958. 276 pp. $4.50. The large and heterogeneous collection of books written over the past fifteen years for the first course in psychology can be fitted rather loosely into two categories-the encyclopedic and the systematic. At their worst, the "encyclopedic" text is merely sprawling and the "systematic" merely personal, but a good defense can be presented for both ways of introducing the undergraduate to a field as various as psychology. Professor Hebb has thrown his weight to the systematic side with a short and cleanly written exposition of his technique for comprehending behavioral data. Drawing on the theoretical position presented in his Organization of Behavior, he has brought into articulation such usually diverse topics as perception, maturation, thinking, and motivation. He manages this task of integration with wit and modesty, and without surrendering to the students' fear of physiological detail. More than this, he accepts much of the layman's language and leads the student past the pitfalls of "mind," "thought," "consciousness," and "imagery" by thoughtful analysis rather than by wholesale rejection of such terms. This respect for Everyman's point of view, together with his tendency to present empirical findings in a condensed narrative free of tables and graphs, will win friends for Professor Hebb among students, but such reasonableness may make it difficult to convince these students that they need to revise the versions of psychology they bring to the first class. This is the paradox of Professor Hebb's book. He demands a great deal of the student in his treatment of neurophysiological hypotheses (for example, 36 of 78 figures detail the nervous system and its function), but he does not tamper too much with their other preconceptions about behavior (for example, there is scarce mention of psychoanalysis, social, psychology, or clinical methods, and a slim 25 pages are given to the vast field of learning). Perhaps the encyclopedists have a point-a dry recitation of empirical results does not charm or persuade, but it permits the teacher to advance his speculative integrations from a comparatively firm base. The systematic or personal textbook of psychology, in 1958, at any rate, may set undesirable boundaries on the first student's appreciation of the complex tasks psychologists face. Valuable as it is in presenting a coherent point of view, Professor Hebb's treatment of psychology can be used effectively as a primary textbook in the first course only by teachers already committed to his view of psychology.