About Psychology 401

Welcome to Psychology 401: Learning Through Life. This reading course is about the making of meaning in life, and it is hoped that you will get much more from it than three senior-level psychology credits.

In introductory courses, psychology is understood to be the study of human behaviour. In this course, psychology is understood to be about life, specifically, adult life. In itself, "behaviour" is a necessary but insufficient concept to capture the dynamics of adult life. The making of meaning transcends any one discipline, including psychology, and you will soon discover that this course ventures into sociology and even philosophy. Life seldom apportions itself into the neat categories of traditional disciplines. Though this course goal may sound grandiose and impossibly ambitious, what makes it manageable is that we will not be looking at all of life, but only at those episodes or phases you wish to examine. Furthermore, the main focus will be on a process for carrying out this examination.

UPDATE (April, 2006): Please see this information regarding student evaluation.