It is generally accepted that psychology, as a separate discipline, started with Wundt’s opening of the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Clinical applications of psychology were initially frowned on as savouring of the recently discredited “treatments” of mesmerism, electrical stimulation, etc. By 1896, however, Lightner Witmer, a follower of Wundt, had opened the world’s first psychology clinic. Due to the lack of any effective method of studying the living brain, the emphasis at that point was entirely on the workings of the mind. Neither the psychoanalysts nor the behaviourists, who, between them dominated most of the twentieth-century psychology, paid any real attention to the brain at all. Aside from the obvious difficulty of finding non-obtrusive ways of studying the physical operations of the brain, there was, again, some feeling of embarrassment over the recently debunked study of phrenology. This absence of an organic basis led to the general impression, still quite widely held, that psychology is airy-fairy unreal semi-science.
Neuropsychology is defined here as “research and clinical practice characterizing the relationship between brain structure, brain functioning [including clinical disease and syndromes] and behaviour”. Though the term was first used in the 1930s, it was not really until the 1960s that non-invasive methods of studying the brain started to become available, allowing the development of a bridge between neurology, psychology and psychiatry. The International Neuropsychological Society was founded in 1967. The need for some control over the rapidly expanding vocabulary of the subject slowly became apparent, and the first edition of this dictionary, then known simply as the INS Dictionary of Neuropsychology, was published in 1998. Since then, of course, the techniques for studying the working brain have developed enormously, and there have been substantial, though not as great, developments in the clinical treatment of disorders. Neuropsychology has grown from a minority interest to being a core component of psychology: It is hard to imagine anyone taking up the study of the subject without expecting to study the workings of the brain. Similarly, what once seemed an unbridgeable gulf between psychiatry and neurology has largely faded. Most psychiatrists are neuropsychiatrists nowadays.
These changes have meant that the neuropsychological vocabulary has become mainstream. This has had the paradoxical effect of making the new edition of this dictionary timely and welcome but, at the same time, less important. There is a need for clear and accurate definitions of neuropsychological terms. The International Neuropsychological Society is clearly the best organization to sponsor such definitions, and the editor and his enormous team have done an excellent job of collecting them. On the other hand, most standard dictionaries of psychology or psychiatry now contain definitions of far more of these terms than they used to. Just comparing the fourth edition of A Dictionary of Psychology (Colman, 2015), which I reviewed for this journal (RR 2015/203), with the second edition of 2006, which I also reviewed (RR 2006/300), there has been a noticeable increase in the number of definitions of neuroscientific terms, just in the past 10 years. If you go back earlier, then the difference is enormous. The first dictionary I reviewed for this journal was the Lexicon of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Kuper, 1988) (RR 1989/026) – I sometimes feel as though I have been reviewing dictionaries of psychology for ever. That lexicon was crammed full of psychoanalytic terms, and it hardly mentioned the brain. Very few of the terms from this dictionary were defined in it. One would expect a substantial overlap in any modern equivalent.
A further problem for the publishers is that most students will not pay £34.49 for a printed hard-backed volume like this for definitions, but will use online services, many of which are available for free. I would note, just for example, the extraordinary NIF: Neuroscience Information Network (www.neuinfo.org/) as a free treasure house of relevant information (RR 2010/334). No single printed source could possibly compete.
I was surprised at the number of people involved in compiling this dictionary – an editor, a team of 10 content advisors and 27 item writers is quite a lot for one small volume. Dr Johnson had “a rag-tag group of” five “predominantly Scottish ne’er-do-wells” to help him with 42,773 definitions, copiously illustrated with literary quotations (Lynch, 2004; Guha, 2011). This book has just under 2,500 definitions and no literary quotations. On the other hand, all of its definitions are accurate and relevant as far as I am able to judge, which is more than can be said for Dr Johnson (“Skilt: a word of which I know not either the etymology or the meaning”). The entries are arranged in a single alphabetical sequence, from A-beta amyloid protein (an amino acid that is found in the amyloid plaques of Alzheimer patients) to Zwinkel’s Test of Praxis (a technique for assessing apraxia). Most of the entries are approximately one paragraph in length. Some, but not all, include etymological information. Some, but not all, have a reference to further reading. All the references I have checked have been accurate and useful. I have not noted any serious omissions. The definitions necessarily make use of a highly technical vocabulary, but the majority of the unusual words which I have checked up on are defined elsewhere in the dictionary, so it can be used as a stand-alone reference source. There are some cross-references, though possibly not enough – there isn’t one from amyloid protein to A-beta amyloid protein, for example.
Libraries that have up-to-date dictionaries of psychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology etc., may find that they have access to adequate definitions of most of the terms here. Nevertheless, it is useful to have this specialised vocabulary brought together in a single source. Academic libraries catering for advanced studies in psychology or the neurosciences and clinical libraries catering for work in psychiatry, neurology or the clinical neurosciences can be recommended to consider this book for acquisition as a useful supplement to their existing reference tools.
