Content
The book contains content from twenty-nine contributors, including psychologists, counselors and school therapists. It also includes content from Brown and Logan. General topics discussed in the work include family, alcohol abuse, relationships, self-esteem, sex and gender, and personality. Specific topics in the field of psychology include clinical psychology, cognition, abnormal psychology, evolutionary psychology, gambling addiction, Pavlovian conditioning and family therapy. Contributor Denis M. McCarthy, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, analyzes risk factors for alcoholism presented in The Simpsons. McCarthy cites Bart's passive-avoidance learning as a risk factor, and notes that Maggie is at a high risk for substance abuse due to violent tendencies.
Though each chapter contains material comparing The Simpsons episodes to academic psychology themes, the chapter titles are less serious, including "Which One of Us is Truly Crazy" and "Looking For Mr. Smarty Pants." Editor Chris Logan explained: "The book’s content is very serious, but it's not presented in an overly serious way." The Simpsons Archive also described the balance between humor and academia in the book, noting: "Fortunately, despite numerous references to various psychological theories and academic studies, the essays steer clear of becoming too serious, and manage to stay entertaining throughout the book."
Read more about this topic: The Psychology Of The Simpsons
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.”
—Thomas Browne (1605–1682)
“Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)