Pergamon Research in Developmental Disabilities. Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 93-98, 1996 Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0891-4222/96 $15.00 + .00 0891-4222(95)00029-4 Book Reviews History and Systems of Psychology. 4th ed. By James E Brennan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994, 398 pp. History and Systems of Psychology traces the development of psychological mod- els from Greek antiquity to the present. It is organized into two parts, the first describes the evolution of psychology within philosophy until the 19th century and the second describes its emergence as an independent discipline in the 20th century when the methodological rigor of science was applied to psychology. In the early chapters, Brennan creatively identifies the natural, biological, mathematical, eclectic, and humanistic orientations developed by ancient Greeks. The reader is advised to carefully study these foundations because they are subsequently refined during the Roman and Middle ages. The succeeding chapters provide a systematic overview of the psychologi- cal thought in Britain, Germany, and France during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Although the presentation is very thorough and critical, the lack of strict chronological order might confuse readers who wish to compare scholars from different parts of Europe at specific time periods. The first part concludes with an outstanding criticism of the competing models during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The author portrays each scholar in terms of some Watsonian prescriptive dimensions, namely how knowledge is derived and formed, the relationship between mind and body, and the nature of mind. A nice complement to this historical retrospection would be the link between the early five Greek orientations to the Watsonian prescriptions under consideration. In addition, if the prescriptions were articulated earlier in the textbook, the reader could use them as guidelines to conceptual organization of the material. Consequently, the reader would be provided with a meaningful framework that would assist in understanding the comparisons of scholars and promote further contemplation. The second part of the book begins with a very comprehensive outline of the progress made in physiology and psychophysics as well as the introduction of Darwinian theory that shaped the intellectual background from which psycholo- gy emerged as a discipline distinct from the natural sciences and philosophy. 93