Life-cycle

Erikson's psychosocial stages of human development are standard fare in introductory psychology textbooks. In this slim volume you will find Erik's personal explanation of these stages and three short chapters by Joan (25 pages total) that elude to an additional ninth stage. Both authors were long-lived (Erik to 91; Joan to 93+), and, accordingly, offer a perspective that relatively few others will share.

Having spent most of the last year teaching cognitive psychology, I was struck by the antiquated writing style and absence of empirical justification for Erik's conclusions. He is clearly indebted to the clinical observations and theoretical formulations of Sigmund Freud, and he devotes his entire first chapter to the task of making this indebtedness clear. It reads as though he were attempting to justify his slight deviation from the master.

The second chapter is another apologia, this one specifically addressing the synthesis of Freud's psychosexual with Erik's psychosocial stages. It is in this chapter that Erik presents his (in)famous eight-stage chart, but it is not discussed in depth.

The more detailed elaboration of the eight stages is attempted in chapter three. Erik starts with old age, rather than with infancy, arguing that the end goal is necessary to understand how the stages relate. His stage explanations are filed with word etymologies, casual references to clinical examples, and sweeping generalizations that embrace world histories, social movements, and philosophies. It would be hard to imagine how one could write this material to be more distinct from the careful limitations and operational definitions required in current psychological research.

Erik's last contribution is an extension of the individual emphasis in psychoanalysis into the social realm where he develops the concept of ego development within a social milieu.

The concluding chapters by Joan are quite different from what comes before. She advocates a ninth stage beyond old age but does not explicitly define details compatible with Erik's earlier charts. Her metaphorical style paints a picture of gerotranscendance (emphasis on "dance") in which healthy resolution of earlier stage conflicts leads to a deepening appreciation of the past while living within the constrained, care-receiving present. In this present moment Joan finds an expansion of self that embraces others and a sense of communion with all things, including death itself. These chapters read like a self-eulogy rather than additional theoretical work.

I believe that more psychology students should read this book because it so clearly demonstrates the differences between what psychology once was and what psychology has become. There is quite a gulf between speculative theorizing and science. That a book this ensconced within the psychoanalytic worldview could have been published as late as 1982 gives one pause.

Don Robbins¹ no-holds-barred description of the route from SELF-centeredness to genuine fulfillment grows out of his personal spiritual journey. He opens the Scriptures that enlightened and liberated him to convince his readers that what happened to him can happen to us. He leaves no doubt that, in Christ, the cycle of defeat can and will be broken. Dr. LeRoy Lawson, Senior Minister, Central Christian Church, Mesa, Arizona.

This book is about the aging process in Japan. It's a collection of four transcribed interviews of middle-aged Japanese people who live in the Hanshin area of Japan (near Osaka). The interviews aren't the type we're used to, with questions and answers, but are rather the summaries of several interviews collected into a sort of biography of each interviewee. The book is split into four sections, with each section granted to each interviewee, and the author of the book then compares each interview to the maturing process described in one of four widely-read Japanese novels, so the reader gets an idea not just of the specifics of one person's life but also of the general ideas that surround the central forces and meanings of the interviewee's life. For instance, one of the interviewees is a female producer for a Japanese network station. Her interview is compared with a popular Japanese novel called _A Man in Ecstacy_ which is about a woman who must put aside her career to care for her senile father-in-law.

The book is well-written and interesting and would make a good supplement for anyone studying the anthropology of Japan.

This book's author scrutinized the software testing in a totally different way from most software testing books. The author focused on modern OO software testing, mainly glass box testing. It is very helpful, because it covers some important changes for OO system testing, which are not included in most software testing books.

Here are some points that impressed me most:

1) Information Hiding and Abstraction: Although information hiding brings many benefits to programmers, it may be a strain on the life of a software tester. To test a method, if a tester wants to check the state of an object before and after the invocation of the method, he needs to access the internal state or data of that object. However, it is hidden to testers. Abstraction separates the essential behavior of an object form its implementation. An object can be tested as a black box using the abstraction of the object.

2) Testability of Object-Oriented Systems: The author's definition of testability is a prediction of the probability of software failure occurring due to the existence of a fault. The definition implies the software testability is related to the ability of software to hide faults for a selected input distribution. Obviously, OO system's testability is lower than procedural counterpart.

3) More opportunities for testers: Object orientation is employed to improve productivity and efficiency. Higher-complexity software is being produced in less time. This increased complexity is conducive to more error opportunities in novel ways. - Hai Huang

Life Cycle Assessment requires a more comprehensive and thorough approach than the author provides. Areas are left open, and the book raises more questions for the reader than the answers it provides. It is not a text that I will refer to to repond to critical questions. It was a disappointment to me.

Life Cycle Assessment is a complicated and controversial field when applied to environmental problems. Questions like "Paper or plastic?" are as ubiquitous as they are baffling. This book does little to clarify matters. It is at best an introduction to a subjective approach. It should not be surprising to the reader to find that the methods described in this book can be employed by separate analysts to reach entirely opposite conclusions.

In response to a critical review that appears in the Journal of Industrial Ecology v1:4, one of the authors of Environmental LCA defended the text with the argument that LCA is, and always will be a "soft science" and therefore may not satisfy readers that seek definitive answers, as no one methodology could be described as applicable to all problems. His defense is disingenuous. Despite its shortcomings, LCA is a promising tool worthy of further development. The goal of new books on the subject should be to advance towards a definitive methodology that results in consistent, interpretable conclusions. When faced with such an intractable, challenging problem as this, it does us all a disservice to suggest that we should just give up (and presumably settle for the kind of text this author has provided).

A definitive work on LCA would be a welcome addition to my library. This book is not it.

The World According to Waskow should be the title of the totally nonsensical, wretched collection of claptrap. Arthur "East River" Waskow should hold the title of "rabbit" and not "rabbi" because all he has done here is taken his personal political and pseudo-social agenda and coated it with a think shellac of Judaism. I took this book out of the library. I returned it. You should do the same.

A useless compedium of politically correct ideas, most of which give the reader a vague feeling of having "read this someplace before."

I disagree with the other two reviewers - I find this book to be both a wonderful reaffirmation of many of the central tenets of our faith, and an instructive and insightful way of putting them into a new framework. I received it as a gift during a difficult time in my life, and have since given copies to many others. While not a scholarly exposition (which is not its intent), it is deeply rooted in our scholastic tradition. Highly recommended!

Trudgill wished to employ his skill as editor in this volume to collate a wide range of works and studies to provide readers with a central text from which to approach nitrates in the environment and issues surrounding management. In my opinion he has not been entirely successful and the final volume should not be regarded as the best of inquiry published on nitrates. He fails to appreciate the latest climate of scientific inquiry where one needs to highlight chaotic approaches to all envirnomental concepts rather than to dwell on the outdated tenets of scientific totality still residing in the arena in question. 5/10.

I purchased this text for a college course,that I was required to take. Simply put this is one of the worst textbooks I have ever seen. The author does not clearly explain the concepts in the book, he uses the most vauge definitions I've ever seen. I reccomend to any students taking a course with this book,appeal to the proffeser to get a diffrent text, and to any proffesors considering using it for their course, please reconsider.

I was forced to use this book for a class. I find the text very unclear and hard to understand with quite a few errors. The layout of the pages is poor and the author seems to get lost in his/her own words. The problems found at the end of each chapter never give enough information to tell you what you are supposed to be doing and they often ask for information that is not found in the text. For what you get this book is extremely overpriced. I may even sell this book back.

There are some really good BASIC terms and methods introduced throughout the book however most is useless fluff. Why not condense to 20 pages and call the "Complete idiots Guide to Systems Analysis & Design ".

The title of the book should be: "Tips on how to use common sense" and not "Managing the Project Life Cycle." For $60 I expected a detailed and resourceful book that would help our company develop a reliable Software Life Cycle. This book wasted my time and my company's money. I would rather use ISO 12207 or MIL-STD 498 documents as a reference rather than this book. Bottom line: there are very few books in print on the Software Life Cycle, yet this is the one you should not buy.

Do you want read a 6-page chapter with less than 20 citations? You have found a great book. Overall, I do not like this book because there are less information than expected. I wished this book summarized better and organized better growing thoughts and results of the cell cycle control in plant growth and development. Several chapters describe just individual research projects, which are suitable for research articles in journals. Also, they do not have reviewed other publications sufficient enough for satisfying students and researchers who are going to step inside this area. If you want to read more in-depth knowledge, you'd better go to library and find a recent reveiw article.