Our Textbook is designed to tell you about psychology. The purpose of the assignments in the Workbook is to enable you to understand and apply some of the principles of psychology in your daily life.

And because the goal of the Textbook is not just to state certain ideas but rather to express them in ways which make them immediately understandable (and usable) to you, the material is presented in a way that is intended to accomplish that goal with a minimum of effort on your part. This means, for example, that I have included quite a lot of detail in the explanations, especially in the early readings.

If you're already accustomed to reading scientific material, don't to be put off by such explanations, and don't skip over them, but just read through them more quickly than the less experienced reader will be able to do.

In particular I want to assure you that my decision to present even low-level explanations in detail does not mean that higher-level material has been omitted because it was too complex for the intended reader. To the contrary, as you'll see below, it is precisely because I have included enough detail in the early readings for almost any serious reader to be able to grasp the concepts, regardless of his background, that I believe I can present highly complex ideas in later readings and still have everyone who has read that far grasp and apply the information presented.

On the other hand if you are someone who has not had much experience in reading technical or scientific material, don't be discouraged by the statement that later readings contain highly complex ideas. The information in the early readings is designed to prepare you for the concepts presented later, and I want you to know that many hundreds of other people with no particular preparation have read these articles and, according to the feedback I've received, have enjoyed them, understood their content and been able to see what the ideas meant in terms of their daily lives. And quite a few of them have told me, when they had finished the readings, that they had come to understand the claim I make here at the start, that almost everyone reading these articles is brighter than they think they are!

Let me repeat that: I believe that most people are much brighter, particularly in terms of ability in math and science, than they think they are, especially if they've come through the public school system in the USA within the past twenty years. As later readings will reveal, the human brain is a remarkably powerful piece of equipment, and the abilities it gives us are seldom realized in schools. It's as though the human mind were a Porsche and they've been telling us that it's a Volkswagen: they've been teaching us to drive it like a Volkswagen, to tune it up according to VW specifications, and even, to the degree that the analogy holds, giving us VW replacement parts.

To understand what I mean, consider the word "complex". It's actually two words, one pronounced COM-plex, the other com-PLEX.

The first word is a noun, as in "he lives in an apartment complex" or "she works in an industrial complex." In each of those sentences the word refers to a collection of buildings all of which are used for a single purpose, residential in one case, industrial in the other.

The noun "complex" has a special meaning in the field of psychology, as in "he has a huge inferiority complex." In that context the word refers to a collection of thoughts all of which are about a single topic, and in the case of an inferiority complex the topic is that the person isn't good enough. So if someone fails a test in second grade, that thought goes into his inferiority complex, and if he loses a race in gym class, that thought goes into his complex, and if he asks a girl for a date and she turns him down, that goes into the complex as well, until eventually the complex becomes so large that it can take control of his behavior in certain situations, and that's when we notice it and say the person has an inferiority complex.

But that's not why we're considering the word here. Rather, we're concerned with the other form of the word, in which it's used as an adjective. Earlier in this reading, for example, I referred to "highly complex ideas" which would be presented in some of the readings. What does the word mean in that context?

It does not mean difficult; that's just a judgment we sometimes make about things that are complex. What the word actually means, as may be inferred from its usage as a noun, is having many parts: It's the opposite of "simple", which doesn't necessarily mean easy - doing chin ups on a bar is simple:   you just grab the bar and pull yourself up, let yourself down, pull yourself up again, etc., but it's not easy. On the other hand, keeping score at bowling is complex, but it's not difficult. Anyone can learn to keep score, but it takes more than a sentence or two to tell someone how to do it.

So when we say that an idea is complex it doesn't mean that it's difficult to grasp, it means that it consists of a number of simpler ideas (see figure one). But this means that if someone lacks one or more of the simpler ideas which are part of a complex idea then he won't be able to grasp the complex idea completely, which is why complex ideas will seem difficult to those who are unprepared for them.

And this is what I believe happens to many people in our public school system. For one reason or another they miss one of the early concepts in an area, then later, when the teacher presents another idea that depends on that one they can't really understand it either; and when they ask a question the teacher may not realize what it is that the student doesn't know (or the teacher may not even be aware that the new concept requires an understanding of the previous ones) and so the missing knowledge is never made up and the student gets progressively further behind. And once this happens, even if the student tries extra hard he won't be able to understand the new material because it's based on information he doesn't have. This is why math and science, the two areas of study where ideas become the most complex, with later ideas building on earlier ones, are those which most people consider hardest.

For example, let's say a child was doing well in his arithmetic class through the six times table; then he was absent for two weeks because of illness, and when he came back to school they were on the eight times table. And he learned his eight- and nine-times tables, but children that age seldom bother to make up missed material on their own, so he just never learned his seven times tables.

Then when they moved on to long multiplication and he was given a problem like 178 multiplied by 27, he would begin by saying "7 times 8 is, hmm, seven times one is seven; seven times two is seven plus seven, fourteen; seven times three is fourteen plus seven, is twenty-one; seven times four is twenty-one, plus seven, ... ; seven times eight is forty-nine, plus seven is ... fifty-six, put down the six and carry the five" and by then another student would have given the answer and so he wouldn't get a chance to finish working out the problem.

And this is because "long multiplication" consists (as shown at the bottom of figure two) of the times tables plus a set of special rules:   e.g. take the units digit of the multiplier (in this case 7) and the units digit of the multiplicand (the 8) - and find their product (this is where the knowledge of the times tables is required, "7 x 8 = 56"), then write down the units digit of the product, and "carry" the tens digit (if any) - where "carry" means to write it down just above the tens digit of the multiplicand.

So, slowed down by his need to figure out all products which involve 7's, the child gets less chance to practice the rules; and, as we can tell from how awkward it feels to read and interpret the simple rule in the previous sentence, for someone to be able to multiply with ease he must apply these rules automatically, without conscious thought, and that ability comes only with practice, the very practice which the child's lack of knowledge of the 7 times tables (at the lower level of complexity) keeps him from acquiring.

Similarly, when it was time to learn long division, the child's lack of multiplication skills would again slow him down, since long division consists, as figure two shows, of long multiplication plus another set of special rules:   e.g. count the number of digits in the divisor and, starting at the left side of the dividend mark off the same number of digits; if the marked off number is smaller than the divisor, mark off one more digit of the dividend; then find the largest digit which, multiplied by the divisor, gives a product which is less than or equal to the marked off portion of the dividend (this is where the long-multiplication enters the process) and write that digit above the last marked-off digit of the dividend.

Again the rules are unwieldy to state (and to try to follow consciously), requiring practice for their mastery; and again the student's lack of learning at the previous level (long multiplication) will make it more difficult for him to develop the skills required at the next level. This is what it means when we say that complex ideas are nothing but a number of simpler ideas put together in a special way.

And although the child might be quite bright and, when he got to high school, grasp the basic concepts of algebra better than many of his classmates, when they reached the process of division of polynomials his not being comfortable with long division would make this learning more difficult (see figure two). And a lack of ability in algebra would lead to his not doing as well as he should in physics (if he even bothered to take physics by that point in his education) and so he would be unlikely to end up with a career in science. Because he missed his seven times tables.

Similarly. someone who, in fourth-grade general science, doesn't grasp the explanation of how the sun's gravitational pull acting against each planet's tendency to keep moving in a straight line results in the elliptical orbit each planet follows will find it much harder, at the start of high-school chemistry, to grasp the concept of electron shells surrounding the positively charged nucleus of an atom, which in turn will limit the depth of his understanding of the periodic table, and so on.

"For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for the want of a horse, the rider was lost; for the want of a rider, the message was lost; for the want of the message, the battle was lost; for the want of the battle, the war was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail." And a mind is a terrible thing to lose.

And although the previous discussions obviously oversimplify the issue, the point is still valid:   if someone is completely familiar with each of the simpler ideas which goes into creating a more complex idea, and if the relationship among those simpler ideas is clearly explained and the person works at combining them as instructed, he will develop an understanding of the new, more complex idea.

It is because of my belief in this principle that there is so much explanatory detail in the early readings, making sure that every reader has a chance to develop the elementary concepts of psychology in a way which will be sufficient to allow him to build the more complex concepts which appear in later readings.

And that's what the Guides and Fill-ins for Answering the Objectives in each Lesson in the Workbook are about. Early in our course I'll offer a demonstration of what I mean by my statement above, that "you're almost certainly brighter than you think you are," but right now I can offer a simple example of what I mean:  

You already "know" (at some level) that we do not learn by taking in information, we learn by putting out responses: You know that listening to (taking in) music will not cause you to learn to play music; to do that you must practice playing an instrument, a "putting out" response. You know that watching (taking in) football will not cause you to learn to play football; to do that you must practice throwing and catching a football, a "putting out" response. And when you have something you really want to remember you don't just "think about it," you say it over and over, either aloud or to yourself - a "putting out" response! Yet what do you do when it's time to "study" for a test? Most students read and re-read the material, which is just "taking in"! And some use "hi-liters," to emphasize material they think is important so that later they can - READ it again!

What's a better approach to "learning" written information? If you know in advance exactly what you need to get from a reading, it should never be necessary to read the material more than once (provided that you take notes as you read, writing down everything you need to know as you come to it.) And of course that's what our Workbook Assignments are about. Everything you need to "know" (or, more accurately, be able to do) when you finish one of our readings is specified in the Objectives Outline for the reading. And once you have completed the Workbook assignment for a Lesson correctly you have accomplished all of the Objectives in the Outline.

It is the process of considering what you have just read in the textbook and then using that information to complete the fill-ins in the Workbook (a "putting out" process) which CAUSES the learning to occur. And the concepts you form in the early Lessons will be the basis for the more complex ideas presented in the later Lessons.

And it is because of this simple-to-complex structure of the Lessons that we begin with an introductory reading which presents a number of ideas which are not technically a part of psychology and which will already be familiar to some readers from other areas of study. For those who have not seen these ideas elsewhere, the introduction will provide all of the basic background ideas they need to read and understand the material which follows, beginning with Lesson One.

And as will be clear from the previous discussion, I recommend that these readings be done in the order in which they are presented. Although you may be especially interested in a topic which is not discussed until one of the later readings, please don't begin by reading that article first. Both your understanding of and your willingness to accept the ideas presented in later articles will often depend on your having considered the concepts and examples discussed in earlier readings, so I urge you to be patient and read the first articles first. I am told by many people who have done these readings in sequence that the farther they read the more interesting the readings become; yet in retrospect they agree that their enjoyment and understanding of the later articles did in fact require their having read the earlier articles.

So with that information from those who have preceded you on this journey, I wish you many pleasant hours of reading and hope that you will find the ideas presented here to be of use in your own life.