Psychology's Grand Theorists - Amy Demorest

Psychology's Grand Theorists
How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas
by Amy Demorest

This book is about a few men who have had a profound effect on a great many people. They have done so by changing the ways that people think about their very own lives. It was the ambition of each of these men to develop a theory vast and powerful enough to account for the human experience in its fullest measure.
They sought to explain those human phenomena that are so universal and ever present as to be taken for granted: Why do we show emotion? Why do we want freedom? Why do we dream?
They sought also to explain those human phenomena that are so odd or paradoxical as to appear to make no sense whatever: What leads a person to develop superstitious beliefs? Or to have a psychotic break? Or to lead a political movement to practice genocide?
Fascinated by the complexity of human life, each developed a model for bringing order and meaning to this complexity. For each man, the theory he offered to the world was so bold that it shocked a major part of his prevailing culture. And in each case, what was initially seen as impossible to accept has now come to be so pervasively adopted as to constitute the essential architecture of our contemporary knowledge. These are the originators of the "Grand Theories" of psychology.