A favorite book of mine: Essentials of Understanding Psychology, by Robert S. Feldman (Amazon link »).
An old review of mine (I will review this later on):
I want to discuss in this message about the work “Essentials of Understanding Psychology”, written by Professor Robert S. FELDMAN (available on Amazon).
How did I buy it? The Doulos vessel, a vessel on which culture and books are promoted, came to Constanta at a certain time, in the summer of 2003. I am from Navodari, I was in Navodari at that time, and when I heard the news I was happy.
I always liked to read very much, so I took advantage of the event. I was in Constanta especially for the event, at 9 o’clock I was in the port, and I waited properly for the opening of the ship where international books were bought at good prices.
There were so many people there! And a steam beauty.
I looked at almost all the books on the ship, more leisurely or on the run.
I chose about 5 books in English, and one of them was “Essentials of Understanding Psychology”, which I mentioned above.
To give you an idea, the last version has 563 pages and is probably in the same format, A4. It’s an enormity of a book.
At that time, I did not understand English 100%, but I wrote down any new word and later looked it up in a dictionary on the Internet.
And give it to him and read it and look around you in fascination. And give them and learn things about human psychology that you didn’t think anyone could write. And continue to do exercises in the dedicated notebook, and learn new things and apply.
It took me about a month that summer to read the book (of course, it was not my only occupation during this period). And I really enjoyed reading it. I read it with great passion and pleasure.
Let me give you some ideas:
1. People learn in many cases about 16 years in schools; And yet, in all these years he never learns how he should learn; There are typically no courses at school where you learn how you should approach the learning process itself; And the book starts with this argument, and continues with an explanation about how you should read – to take notes right on the book, to make parables with things from the immediate reality, to have a dedicated place to learn, to have no disturbing elements , to make a ritual when you read, to synthesize the information, to resume from time to time the information, even if you know it well;
2. There is a syndrome of the medical student – while reading about diseases, you have the impression that you are familiar with many symptoms and you end up suspecting yourself of things you read in the book; Fake thing;
3. A survey made in a public transport station – a person in need, a smaller or larger group of people; Question – what are the chances that someone from the group of people (smaller or larger) will help the man in need? Does the probability of helping a person increase if you are part of a large group of people? Or if you are at the bus stop and you are with the person in need, do you help him immediately? Well, a study showed that the bigger a group is, the less responsibility a particular individual has, and the less likely someone will help you; You have a better chance of getting help if it’s just you and the person who could help you than if you’re in a crowd!
4. A famous experiment with monkeys – some monkeys were placed in a room, and access to a banana was quite simple, but it still required an effort – to put a box; A monkey realized that it is necessary to put a box in order to reach the bananas; He put the box, tried to reach the banana; Here a researcher intervened, who penalized the monkey that took the banana, and the rest of the monkeys; After a while, any monkey that tried to take the banana was penalized in this way, and the group was also penalized; The monkeys made a correlation, and they didn’t let any of them touch the bananas; The researchers introduced new monkeys, and they did not get to touch a banana, because they were permanently penalized by the group; At last they changed all the old monkeys, and none of the new monkeys touched the banana; Unfortunately, the monkeys had no correlation – Why not get my hands on the banana? What will happen? – They only knew that if they touch the box, the rest of the monkeys will attack them;
5. The book is also a joke – regarding the previous experiment, it shows a maid who enters, after the schedule, the monkey’s cage and tries to reach the banana by jumping; There was a box around her, she could have taken the box and made it reach the banana, but she kept jumping, without success; It’s not exactly an evolution, don’t you think?
I lent the book to several people, it seems to me a nice gesture to share the important things for you, so I don’t currently have it, but I have chances to recover it at some point. On the other hand, buying the latest version of the book on Amazon is an even more tempting option.
I warmly recommend this book, it is, along with “Journalul Fericirii” by Nicolae STEINHARDT, part of my favorite books.
Cheers to everyone’s reading!
