There is someone else far better qualified than I am to respond to that question. Tom Butler-Bowdon is the author of five volumes in the 50 Classics series. He selected and then discusses primary sources for five subjects: prosperity, psychology, success, self-help, and spirituality. In each of the five volumes, he provides a brief bio of each author, then examines several key ideas and explains the enduring significance of the given work. Here is a representative selection of authors and works featured in 50 Psychology Classics:
Eric Berne, Games People Play (1964)
Albert Ellis & Robert Harper, A Guide To Rational Living (1961)
Eric Erikson, Young Man Luther (1958)
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence at Work (1998)
William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)
Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961)
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1970)
B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom & Dignity (1953)
With regard to 50 Psychology Classics, Butler-Bowdon provides provides an overview in the Introduction on the development of modern psychology as a field of study, once “early titans” (e.g. Williams James, Sigmund Freud, Jung, and Adler) had written books that the general public could understand. Within the Introduction, he also suggests seven themes that offer different perspectives on “who we are, how we think, and what we do” and assigns to each a cluster of relevant commentaries. Readers can then decide which themes are of greatest interest to them, and, on which selections to focus. For example, five sources are suggested for “Tapping the unconscious mind: Wisdom of a different kind.” They are:
The Gift of Fear (Gavin de Becker)
My Voice Will Go With You (Milton Erickson by Sidney Rosen)
The Interpretation of Dreams (Sigmund Freud)
Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Carl Jung)
To those curious to know which are the most highly-regarded books on the subject of psychology, I highly recommend this book as a guide to other sources. Here is a link to Butler-Bowdon’s Web site where you can obtain more information about him and his works. You can also sign up for e-mail alerts:
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