In this article, I describe a special topics course in American popular psychology. Course objectives are to (a) trace the history of the popularization of psychology in America; (b) discuss the efforts of the “great popularizers,” including William James, G. Stanley Hall, Hugo Münsterberg, and J. B. Watson; and (c) evaluate the quality of various examples of popular psychology. I emphasize active learning throughout the course. Students read original sources, participate in a variety of exercises, and prepare historical papers or content analyses of popular psychology. I recommend that interested faculty offer such a course or incorporate some of the material on popular psychology into existing history of psychology courses.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ArlukeA.LevinJ.SuchwalkoJ. (1984). Sexuality and romance in advice books for the elderly. The Gerontologist, 24, 415–419.
2.
BackK. W. (1987). Beyond words: The story of sensitivity training and the encounter movement (2nd ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
3.
BarfieldS.FriedS. B. (1993, April). Recent self-kelp bestsellers: A preliminary analysis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Culture Association, New Orleans, L.A.
4.
BouhoutsosJ. C.GoodchildsJ. D.HuddyL. (1986). Media psychology: An empirical study of radio call-in psychology programs. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 17, 405–414.
5.
CraigheadL.McNamaraK.HoranJ. (1984). Perspectives on self-help and bibliotherapy: You are what you read. In BrownS.LentR. (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (pp. 878–929). New York: Wiley.
6.
CushmanP. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45, 599–611.
7.
DennisP. M. (1989). “Johnny's a gentleman, but Jimmie's a mug”: Press coverage during the 1930s of Myrtle McGraw's study of Johnny and Jimmy Woods. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 25, 356–370.
8.
DukeC.FriedS.PlileyW.WalkerD. (1989). Contributions to the history of psychology: LIX. Rosalie Rayner Watson: The mother of a behaviorist's sons. Psychological Reports, 65, 163–169.
9.
FaludiS. (1991), Backlash: The undeclared war against American women. New York: Crown.
10.
Frankfort-NachmiasC.NachmiasD. (1992). Research methods in the social sciences (4th ed.). New York: St. Martin's.
11.
FriedS. B.SchultisG. A. (1995). The best self-help and self-awareness books: A topic-by-topic guide to quality information. Chicago: American Library Association Editions.
12.
FriedS. B.Van BoovenD.MacQuarrieC. (1993). Older adulthood: Learning activities for understanding aging. Baltimore: Health Professions.
13.
FullerR. C. (1986). Americans and the unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.
14.
HaleN. G. (1971). Freud and the Americans: The beginnings of psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. New York: Oxford University Press.
15.
HallG. S. (1910, April). What is to become of your baby?Cosmopolitan, 48, 661–668.
16.
KaminerW. (1992). I'm dysfunctional, you're dysfunctional: The recovery movement and other self-help fashions. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
17.
LandyF. J. (1992). Hugo Münsterberg: Victim or visionary. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 787–802.
18.
McCallR. B. (1988). Science and the press: Like oil and water. American Psychologist, 43, 87–94.
19.
MeyersC.JonesT. B. (1993). Promoting active learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
20.
MoranJ. (1989). Newspaper psychology: Advice and therapy. Journal of Popular Culture, 22, 119–127.
21.
PastoreN. (1978). The Army intelligence tests and Walter Lippmann. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 316–327.
ScottD. (1980). The popular lecture and the creation of a public in mid-nineteenth century America. Journal of American History, 66, 791–809.
24.
ShieldsS. A.KosterB. A. (1989). Emotional stereotyping of parents in child rearing manuals, 1915–1980. Social Psychology Quarterly, 52, 44–55.
25.
SimondsW. (1992). Women and self-kelp culture: Reading between the lines. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
26.
StarkerS. (1989). Oracle at the supermarket: The American preoccupation with self-help books. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
27.
TavrisC. (1986). How to publicize science: A case study. In GoldsteinJ. (Ed.), Reporting science: The case of aggression (pp. 21–32). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
28.
WatsonJ. B.WatsonR. R. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: Norton.
29.
WrobelA. (1975). Orthodoxy and respectability in nineteenth-century phrenology. Journal of Popular Culture, 9, 38–50.
