Reddit reviews The Story of Psychology, Updated & Revised Edition

I just picked up this book, The Story of Psychology, by Morton Hunt and this was, appropriately, the first bit of information in the prologue. Luckily, Wikipedia had an article on the subject that described the event relatively well.

> The Greek historian Herodotus conveyed an anecdote about Psamtik in the second volume of his Histories. During his travel to Egypt, Herodotus heard that Psammetichus ("Psamṯik") sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried "βεκὸς" (bekòs) with outstretched arms, the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of the Phrygian word for "bread." [OP's source: "Psamtik made inquiries and learned that becos was the Phrygian word for bread."] Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians, and that Phrygian was the original language of men. [OP's source: "He concluded that, disappointingly, the Phrygian's were an older race than the Egyptians." I think this is an important inclusion, as Psamtik was not open to the idea that innate language did not exist, but rather, those who spoke the innate language first must have led to the first establishment of race. This must have been very disappointing to find out that his experiment disproved the commonly held belief that "they were the most ancient race on earth." This now discredited assumption must have had interesting sociological implications

Edit: Added Amazon link and Jesus, don't buy this book at Books-A-Million unless that's the kind of book store you want to support. Its half as expensive on Amazon. God damn I could've gotten the used hardcover for $.10... I'm only in the prologue since I took time to post this, but I can assure you, its certainly worth 10¢.

I was told that the link had been submitted, but I searched "Psamtik" and nothing but my post came up so I left it.

The Story of Psychology is, in my amateur opinion, the best history of Academic, Western, Empirical Psychology that I have come across. I would encourage you to read the source material of the great clinicians and theoreticians, because for whatever reason, it isn't mandated in schools. Read Freud, and Adler, and Jung, and Rogers, and Maslow, and Piaget, and Fromm. Don't worry if it is incomprehensible at first, you will learn the language as you go.

Here is where my opinion deviates from the normative: if you really want to understand psychology, study preliterate cultures, mysticism, religious scripture and psychedelic experiences. These cultures, to whatever extent, never lost contact with the unconscious and needed to "discover" it, as with our Western cultures.

The Story of Psychology by Morton Hunt perfectly covers history of psychology from Ancient Greeks to German Psychophysicists to Behaviorism to Cognitive Psychology. It's some 600 pages, but very entertaining, easy to read and accurate at the same time.
The Other Side of Psychology by Denise Cummins gives a nice overview of cognitive psychology - memory, learning, emotion etc., plus famous experiments such as those of Milgram. Very interesting read.