UWG Introduction to General Psychology

UWG Introduction to General Psychology

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Description

This open textbook for Introduction to General Psychology is a remix of newly-created chapters by UWG faculty and existing materials from OpenStax Psychology. The text was created under a Round Eight Textbook Transformation Grant.

Authors' Description:

This free textbook you are holding in your virtual hands is a labor of love. It combines eight brand-new and unique chapters with a dozen or so somewhat modified chapters from an existing freely available textbook in general psychology, and brings the original and the new work together in a way that we hope is a gift to you in your study and more importantly in your self-awareness. I’d like to tell you a bit more about the text, and how it came to be, here at the beginning of your journey with Psychology (and maybe with yourself!).

I taught my first Intro class in 1988, and I have taught this marvelous and challenging class most semesters since then. I have never been completely satisfied with the available textbooks: some were too difficult, some were too watered-down. Some were overly conceptually dense, some too thinly applied. All were expensive, especially for students who struggle to make their way and sometimes must decide between buying a $200 textbook and having something to eat.

And I could never find a textbook that:

  • Introduced students to psychological knowledge not just as something to know, but as something to equip them to live differently, in self-awareness;
  • Included a detailed yet accessible overview of the importance of psychological theory, and how it allows a new way of thinking and feeling and being in the world;
  • Acquainted students with Psychoanalysis (mostly not about sex, as it turns out) as a provocative and helpful way to take up knowing, and self-awareness;
  • Ushered students into the marvelous landscapes of Humanistic, Existential, and Transpersonal psychologies, not as mere anachronistic social movements or philosophies but as insistent demands to take up living, differently;
  • Accompanied students in a new knowing about culture, and context, and how much of what we assume as roles and identity and even the Self is a function not of who we are, but of where and when we are; and
  • Sketched the contours of Consciousness, of Development, and of Suffering and Wellness in ways that were more or less adequate to these topics.

So I wanted a textbook that gave all students equal access to learning, and brought to them these unique and transformative gifts, from psychology. The “free” part? That was easy, thanks to availability of a pretty good traditional OpenStax Intro Psych text. And the new chapters, adding up to another complete book, happened due to the kind sponsorship of two Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) grants I received in 2016 and 2017.

This program sponsors development and use of open educational resources and in many ways its sponsorship allowed the development of this text. I am grateful beyond these words for ALG support.

Course Title

Introduction to General Psychology

Course Number

PSYC 1101

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Date

Spring 2018

Publisher

University System of Georgia

Keywords

psychology

Disciplines

Psychology

UWG Introduction to General Psychology

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