The Oxford Companion to the Mind

Rating:
Summary: some entries good some bad
Review: The whole discussion of psychiatric concepts like depression, autism, or schizofrenia is limited to listing of symptoms and research results on whether they are purely physiologically determined etc..if this is the state of psychiatric understanding of human mind and its illnesses today, then its probably true that were living in very oppressive societies.. otherwise entries on psychological issues like intelligence or visual perception give good introductions to the state of current research.. can be of some help as a general referance work but dont expect any serious illuminations..

Rating:
Summary: Very thorough and still timely
Review: This one-volume reference book deals, after all, with a subject that is constantly subject to change. Who knows how many new neurological discoveries may make some statement or another within these pages moot tomorrow, or may have done so already in the decade and more since its publication?

Despite such concerns, this book holds up well. I'd like to praise in particular a brief but pointed discussion of the work of the French philosopher Maine de Biran (1766-1824), written by F.C.T. Moore. De Biran explained that my intention to raise my arm is never an "object" to be grasped by an "inner sense" -- it is, rather, a fact or a relation, the connection of the active self with the arm.

This was an important break with earlier thought, and a step toward Jamesian pragmatism on the one hand, continental phenomenology on the other.

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Summary: http://www.infidels.org/infidels/products/books/
Review: _The Oxford Companion to the Mind_ is an excellent reference source of information on various mental phenomena. It was relevant to my essays because several entries dealt with the current state of the parapsychological evidence and how that related to the question of survival of bodily death