Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. - book reviews

This impressive four-volume encyclopedia with about 2,800 pages contains some 258 articles and an index. Each article begins with an outline of main headings and a glossary and ends with a bibliography. The articles also contain cross-references which are given at the end of the paragraph in which the first mention of a subject covered elsewhere is made. The bibliographies are generally brief and contain review and research articles as well as recent secondary sources. The editor-in-chief, V. S. Ramachandran, is assisted in this massive undertaking by an editorial advisory board consisting of psychiatrist Aaron Beck, neurologist Antonio Damasmo, and psychologists David Buss, William Iacono, Edward Jones, and Jerome Kagan.

The articles are generally written by well-known experts in their respective areas. The coverage is somewhat uneven, and there is avoidable duplication. For example, the article on "agoraphobia" takes more space (13 pages) than the one on "phobias" (10 pages). The latter article also covers agoraphobia extensively. Twelve pages are devoted to an article on personality disorders which contains a section on obsessive-compulsive behavior. There is also a separate article on obsessive-compulsive behavior which takes 12 pages.

The editor-in-chief, V. S. Ramachandran, claims in his preface: "The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior is the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of reviews currently available" (Vol. 1, p. xiii). This is an arguable statement in view of the fact that the Encyclopedia of Psychology (2nd ed.) edited by Raymond J. Corsini and also published this year in four volumes, is no less up-to-date and comprehensive. Ramachandran defines psychology as "the study of human mind," but there is no entry in the table of contents under the mind, although there are four separate articles on the brain. This may not be surprising because Ramachandran is a physician turned neuropsychologist. The claim for comprehensiveness is further eroded by the fact that there are significant omissions of important topics. For example, there is no article on subliminal perception. We do not find an entry under subliminal perception even in the index.

Parapsychologists would be disappointed to find little coverage of the field. There is one paragraph on parapsychology in the article on psychology and religion. Even this paragraph is devoted almost entirely to defending the argument that the growth of psychology as a discipline in the United States was due to a curious and unwitting alliance between those who attempted to debunk spiritualism by establishing the validity of psychology and the public whose support of psychology was based on the assumption that psychology provides scientific grounds for believing in the reality of spiritualism. "Parapsychology," it is observed, "is not widely accepted as purely spiritual or as scientific fact, producing a bridge between psychology and religion that is neither a scientific explanation of religion nor a religious claim to transcend science in purely spiritual terms" (Vol. 3, p. 628).

We are told in the preface that the Encyclopedia of Human Behavior is an invaluable resource for those seeking to ask such questions as What is superego? What is repression? and so on. This encyclopedia is designed to provide the reader with quick answers to such questions "without recourse to extensive library research." Regrettably, the encyclopedia does not live up to that objective. If one should ask What is parapsychology? What is ESP? What are psychic phenomena? he or she would get little help from this encyclopedia. There are no descriptions of the phenomena parapsychology covers or the methods it uses to investigate the phenomena. Nor are there any references to guide one to any relevant books or articles on this subject.

Parapsychology is not alone in this benign neglect. Humanistic psychology, for example, has a single entry in the index and a brief mention in an article on conflict resolution. Similarly, transpersonal psychology gets one small paragraph in the article on psychology and religion.

Parapsychologists will find two familiar names represented among the contributors, but their contributions are not in the area of parapsychology. Stanley Krippner is the second author of the article on "persuasion" and Adrian Parker is the first author of the article on "conflict behavior."

The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior is a useful compendium consisting of many interesting articles that students of psychology as well as lay persons may find useful. As an encyclopedia, however, it is severely limited in its scope and coverage. It contains no biographical information about psychologists and many psychological terms are simply missing. This book is more a handbook than an encyclopedia of human behavior.

K. RAMAKRISHNA RAO Institute for Parapsychology 402 N. Buchanan Blvd. Durham, NC 27701

COPYRIGHT 1994 Parapsychology Press
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