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Manually stultifying a discipline

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The Manual of the American Psychological Association has been around in successive editions for many years and continues to set the standard for the ways in which psychologists write and communicate their discipline. Publication manuals can be necessary and there is no doubt that when the APA first established the Manual there was a need, in the era of print technology with type setting and proof editing, for precise rules on tabular settings, figure descriptions etc. The problem for today is that the continued need for such rules to guide the printer has become enshrined with a style of writing and reporting that dates from the same era. As has been pointed out several times elsewhere, the Manual was first written at the time when American psychology was dominated by the Behaviorist paradigm and by methodological operationalism. Behaviorism eschewed certain kinds of psychological states and operationalism specified only particular ways in which processes and methods could be described. Both of these paradigms have been long overturned and psychology is no longer confined by such restraints. But still the style is used to restrict the ways that young, incoming members of the profession and science are taught to write and therefore, oftentimes, to think about their subject matter and the people that they are studying. In America such restraints may only be imposed at the level of graduate study and the student will have reserves of thought and style that resist such intrusions. In other parts of the world, such restrictions are imposed from the very beginning of the undergraduate degree. Students therefore learn to think about people and operations in a way that narrows the descriptions and the thought processes that are applied to the issues and problems. If the APA was the only outlet with such restrictions, these effects would be a cause for regret but not despair. The APA style, however, has been adopted by virtually all of psychological publishing houses, so there are few escape routes. It is not a matter simply of putting the references in the correct form; it is about thinking about subject matter in severely restricted ways. It is probably too late to hope for any change in the ways in which the APA Manual is used and further procreated. But it is a case study, worthy of serious study, of how the past, lived and recorded with good intentions, can continue to stifle the present and the future. The APA Manual has become functionally autonomous, affecting thinking but with little or no continuity with the past. To a degree it is pathological in form and, worse than that, it is a pathogen that is severely infectious.

Excellent condition, excellent deal	Customer Rating:
The book was just as advertised and in excellent condition, arriving much sooner than expected.

A great writing resource!

Customer Rating:

This book is proving to be a valuable resource for outlining the writing "rules of the road". I'm in the midst of writing my doctoral dissertation and the APA Manual has proved extremely useful for learning the proper way to cite references from various sources (like telephone conversations), use combinations of unusual punctuation (should the comma go inside or outside this parentheses?), and for presenting statistical output and tables. I can see it continuing to be a useful reference for writing articles in professional journals as well since it offers guidance on writing manuscripts and authorship (which is a topic that can bring collaborators to fisticuffs!) I highly recommend this book!

APA MANUEL fifth edition	Customer Rating:
The best thing that I ever did was to purchase the APA Manuel. It has helped me with formating and the proper way to cite in text and referance in APA format. This book is much better than the Diane Hacker book on APA.

Evil But Necessary	Customer Rating:
This is one of the most cumbersome and difficult to navigate reference books out there, and it is notorious for being so. I highly suggest getting an APA formatting program for writing your papers using this style. I use APA PERRLA myself, and love it. You will still need to refer to the publication manual for your more rarely used reference types, etc. Unfortunately, it's a necessary evil.