Essential psychology - Robert B. Burns

While this book is concerned with psychology let no reader believe that after studying it he or she will be a budding psychologist. Only those elements of psychology which are central to the adequate functioning of the professional in the health and allied caring services are covered. Many popular topics, such as intelligence, memory, concept formation, will not be found within the covers of this book. The objective of this book is to enable those professionals who have responsibility for the well-being, health and care of others to develop insight into and to become more empathetic to the needs, motivations, feelings and behaviour of their charges. An ancillary objective is that the readers too might come to understand a little more about their own behaviour, particularly in relation to their work situation. Patients in hospital, children in residential care, the elderly in the old folks' home are all perceiving and thinking organisms, not merely interesting medical cases, a classical set of symptoms, a collection of statistics or a bulging case file. Every person, whether professional or client, is affected by the way others respond to them, by the feelings each has for the other, by the non-verbal signals of eye contact, smile, and voice tone, etc.