(80 reviews) Author: ISBN : 9781429216319 New from $29.97 Format: PDFCheck out a preview.
Each new edition of Ronald Comer’s Abnormal Psychology has offered a fresh, comprehensive, and exciting presentation of the field, with objective, balanced coverage of a wide range of theories, studies, disorders, and treatments and all major models. Each new edition has also integrated the latest in pedagogical tools and state-of-the-art media for students and instructors.
But even by Comer’s standards, the new edition of Abnormal Psychology is an exceptional revision that captures the way the field has changed, the world has changed, and students have changed. The beautifully redesigned new edition features more than 2,000 new references from the years 2006-2009; hundreds of new photos, tables, and figures; and expanded coverage of multicultural issues, cognitive theories and treatments, and neuroscience topics. There has never been a text for the course so well-attuned to both the field of abnormal psychology and the wide range of students exploring it.
- Hardcover: 587 pages
- Publisher: Worth Publishers; Seventh Edition edition (January 30, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 142921631X
- ISBN-13: 978-1429216319
- Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 9 x 10.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds
Abnormal Psychology PDF
I'd heard good things about Comer's textbook and ordered it for my Abnormal Psychology class. It's been a disappointment to me and to my students.
(1) Despite decades of well conducted research on attachment theory, Comer relegates discussion of psychodynamic theory to Freudian theory--essentially holding up a straw man (perhaps so he can disparage the approach?). It's like holding up the Wright Brothers in teaching a course on aerodynamics and ignoring all the progress since their time. I've had to add readings and discussion of attachment theory throughout, and have told students to skip over much of Comer's discussion of Freud. Not inaccurate, just not especially relevant today.
(2) Comer cherry picks the research findings. Sure, there's good evidence for the efficacy of CBT interventions, but there have also been at least 3 metanalyses showing a lack of differential treatment effectiveness among the major approaches. Where's that discussion, to balance out the presentation? And again, why present drive theory approaches to treatment as representative of psychodynamic thinking? Students are ill served by that sort of biased approach.
(3) Comer has an annoying habit of presenting very detailed findings from various biochemical studies on the disorders he presents, then saying something like, "More recent studies contract the other research, and we really don't know the truth at this point." If that's so, then for undergraduates, it may not be worth going into such great detail about biochemical and brain-related findings that lack consistent support in the literature.
(4) Finally, it's okay to moralize, but not to disguise moralizing as an unbiased presentation of science. This happens on various occasions, such as the "Psych Watch" box on Ecstasy.
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