... read a psychology book I saw this as a good overview of the topic
933910
For someone who has never read a psychology book I saw this as a good overview of the topic. Although, I wasn't a big fan of most of the examples used throughout and thought it to be too "personable" for this type of book. In addition, there were multiple grammatical and punctuation errors.
3955745
I really liked this book that was required for a psychology class. It is easy to read and very interesting.
4196477
It was a light and good read - nice examples and good quotes! Nice tactful ways of applying human psychology into day to day interaction. Towards the end it did go into a bit of a drag as some information was relatable and felt repeated. But I guess thats the objective of the book to make the reader wiser and anticipate psychological and behavioral patterns.
3867741
This was a pretty good book about the Myers-Briggs/Platonic typology.  It has a test you can take to see what type you are.  I was a little dissapointed that it didn't explain the Jungian parts of it, such as the difference between "Judging and Perceiving", but I like how it connected the Myers-Briggs to many other typologies, esp. Plato's.  It really goes in-depth and you kinda have to swim through it, but probably everyone would find at least some insight about themselves.
3578353
There are things here about the psychology of people who are shy, different kinds of shyness, some root causes, things you can do about it, how to not raise shy kids, and some benefits of being shy (e.g. tend to do good work that would be hard for flighty or gregarious people -- intense research, etc.)
The co-author is a psychologist or psychiatrist, and probably contributed the theories.
My only complaint was that being shy was occasionally refered to as selfishness in other clothes.
All in all, there is some good advice but it didn't change my life or anything.
3738481
I own this book and volume 2. When I purchased these books I was new to the endophenotype concept so they were useful as an introduction. There is a heavy focus on schizophrenia in these books, which given that I am a schizophrenia researcher I found to be ok, but others outside of this field should be aware of this. I did learn a bit in this book, but some of it was so broad as to be generally not useful, and a lot of the material was repeated across multiple chapters. In reading these books, I did get a feel for the current state-of-play in schizophrenia endophenotype research, but Im guessing it wasn't much more than what I could have gotten from existing review papers from PubMed.
1508430
In this book the author gives a brief overview of how people think, and why they are believed to think that way. Despite the marketing copy, however, this book doesn't lay out an approach to evaluating and dealing with people you encounter.

The first part of the book explains the different personality types psychologists have defined, and also the personality flaws they have defined. The second part discusses the nature and nurture (my words, not the author's) of peoples' psychologies. To somewhat oversimplify, the author takes the common view that genes provide proclivities, and stimuli trigger, or don't trigger, those proclivities. These chapters make for a decent, short overview of the subject, but if you have been following research in this area at all you won't find any surprises here.

The final part has three chapters, the first two of which deal with character and with peoples' development of their life stories. As in the earlier parts, the author uses famous people as examples of how the categories identified by psychologists can be used to develop insight into why people act as they do.

Only in the last ten pages of the book does the author provide an outline of how he uses this material to understand the people he encounters. While the entirety of the book is useful for this purpose, the marketing copy makes it sound much more like a how to book than it is.

Were this book advertised as an overview of the psychological characterization of personality types, I might have given it four stars. But judging it against the product description I can't go beyond three.
2204118
Overall I found that this could be a book that I would return to.  There is a lot of information contained in the book and it is difficult to take it all in in one reading.  This was a fight between wanting to see what came next and wanting to get every detail.  I think "seeing what came next" won in this reading.  Even though I relate and grew up immersed in the truths of this book, I still found that I was enlightened by some things.  I like that much of the subjects were fully substantiated not only by research, but case studies.  Also, for me, it was interesting to find that introversion is really just part of who I am, and not some side effect of being lazy and NOT a flaw.  I will be thinking about this work long after having read it and using it as a source of confirmation that I didn't grow up with a serious flaw.  In fact, it may have been a gift.

On the critical side, I got the sense of a negative vibe toward extroverts...and repeatedly the author said this was not so...however, I felt that way.  I concede that the subject is introversion, but something asks for a balance in this topic.  This is only a small concern, but somewhat of a negative feeling while reading this for me.
2940665
First of the all, I must apologize to the author for my such lateness. I won this book then shelved this book for a while. My bad. Secondly, I was minor in psychology when I was undergraduate. That's why this book interested me in several ways before I read it. I don't know much about mania. This book definitely opened my eyes to this person's perspective of experienced mania. Also, I know there are some plainly messed up doctors and nurses against those mental disorder patients. So, I gave this three stars, not because of the story but the aspect of this book could have given more depth perspective. Also, this proven the argument that medicine isn't always an answer but potential trigger.
536575
The book is full of psychology material and the new method found called NVC and some personal experience of author.
Its worth noting down or highlight the point.
2246860
This book was very helpful.  But its more of an overview without going into real detail on each step of the healing process.  She references alot of other good books and authors so now ill go read their more specific books on the topics that relate to my specific situation.  Overall, it was a good read and im glad to have read it.  Gives great hope.
747244
I only recently completed my mandatory Psychology class for college, and enjoyed it. However, I would have liked to have used this book while I was taking the course to immerse myself in more examples. My book contained a lot of theory but not always application. I have retained my Psychology book (it was school specific), and I think it would be easy to bounce back and forth from your primary text to this book for a different expression of the same basic material.

If you are struggling in class, I think this could help out your grade by including more real-world examples to help the material stick. I also feel this will be a great overview for a person who was never forced to take a Psychology class but would like to have a basic understanding for dinner table conversation or Jeopardy.
2044132
I found this book to be very informative to say the least and actually, I think it could give hope to someone.  There were times I thought it was more for another Psychologist, but it is mostly easy reading.  I think a lot of people could find from this book that they may have the same types of problems described and know that there is help out there and hope.  It's a book that should have been written.
3888231
The chapter being reviewed from, Psychology for the Curious, is Chapter 6, Psychology Students Learn How to Use Evidence to Inform Practice, to Think Critically and Write Well-Dean Suzzane Kessler, PhD. Page 1029 of 2244, 46% according to Kindle online reading.
 Overall I found the Chapter to be useful because primarily it brings to light some of the common misconceptions about incoming college students, and what they perceive the Psychology major to be based on. One misconception Dr. Kessler brought up was the idea that most incoming college students think that people who are in Psychology are primarily only therapists, this is far from the truth, and although many people in Community Psychology are focused on therapeutic principles, the psychology major as a whole is much more diverse. The chapter also discussed the idea that Psychology can bring forth many essential skills in the world for employees, including critical thinking skills primarily.
4795092
If you're not familiar with the topics of psychology and/or neurology, than read this book. Winston's summary and discussion of the field is funny, easy(ish) to read and relevant.

If you're like me and read (perhaps too) many books on the topic, how does Winston's piece stack up to other brain heavyweights?

Well he has some strengths: Winston lacks the cold depth many neuro/psychology writers develop. He adds a human touch when discussing ofttimes disturbing psychological findings, without taking away from the hard science of the information.

Where does Winston perform less well? In the intro to his books Winston often owns up to his own errors, and I found myself wishing he did just hire a darn editor. While I don't think there were that many 'errors' per se, the tangents, unusual and eccentric changes in subject or occasional poorly structured information grated more than once.

Worth a read?

Definitely

Annoying?

Yes
3556804
A good overview of the major psychological disorders, with interesting insight into each. The DSM-5 "boxes" that articulate the specific criteria for each disorder was helpful, but I learned is actually a bit different and often abbreviated from the actual DSM-5 text. It didn't cause any problems for me in the course though.
1891710
I like the book a lot.  I think it does a very good job of asking a lot of big questions to pique interest, with a graphic format that's conducive to leading impatient minds to the important points.  It's more popular psychology than academic, dry psychology, but it is factual and research based.  The book also includes pages on important researchers and psychologists,as well as research topics and methodologies in a very abbreviated graphical format.
It is a DK book, and it reminds me of DK books.  I always love them.  My older teen (18, highschool)  however, who has not had any psychology coursework, says it is too simplistic.  He wanted more detail.  He specifically stated that the book lacked the topics he really wanted to learn more about, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and cutting behaviors- in other words, he wanted to know more about the DISORDERS that he has seen in classmates and heard mentioned by online friends.  He was right, the book is fairly devoid of a meaningful discussion of abnormal psychology.
It's a good bathroom book, if you keep those around,.because it has a lot of 2 page topics that don't have to be read in any particular order.