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.,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.