Good psychology dictionary?

littlebird22

I was wondering if anyone studying for a psychology degree could suggest a good dictionary. My friend is in 3rd year and is really struggling to understand the terminology in the papers she now has to read so I want to get her a psychology dictionary to help her and try and cheer her up a bit. I don't want to spend a fortune if possible but I don't want to buy something useless either! I'm doing English so don't really have much clue when it comes to psychology! Thanks.

bobblebot

Yea, really good one is key concepts in psychology (Winstanley) think its about £10 new but can get cheaper i think on amazon.

DrFluffy

If it is anything like medicine, often using the "define:" tool on google gets you a decent return, without slashing out on a dictionary.

Does her university have a psychology dictionary available as an e-book?

You could then save your money and make her a pamper basket: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=309335&page=246

eira

Penguin used to do an excellent range of dictionaries-they used to have ones for Psychology which I used on my degree and recommended to my A level students

melancholly

i have a psychology dictionary but it is largely useless as soon as you get very highly specialised.... i find google more helpful tbh, because then you can see how it is used in a particular context.

if she's finding it that much of a problem, it may be worth finding introductory papers to read first. they tend to explain things to a non-specialist more. the 'trends in...' or 'current opinion in...' journals are great for that, as well as annual review of psychology.

sorry to be negative about it - would chocolate work as an alternative (it always makes me feel better, at least in the short term!)?

littlebird22

Thanks for all the replies. I was going to get the Penguin one but now after Melancholly's post I'm not so sure. I wanted to get her a dictionary because she keeps coming in to use my OED and I thought a specifically psychology one might be better. I understand the rationale behind reading introductory papers to make the set ones easier to understand but I think she would feel she didn't have the time to do that, she spends so much time working already. She has seen a massive step up from having the lightest workload in the flat last year to having a huge workload this year. I don't think that I'm quite up to making a basket thing, although they look gorgeous, but I will definitely stretch to some chocolate for her!