This book explores the interaction between people as they develop relationships with each other, and examines what lies behind the behaviour we can observe from these interactions. The contributors cover the main themes that arise from the study of social and personal relationships with emphasis on: power; change and development; function; levels of analysis; the construction of meaning; and autonomy and choice. These themes are illustrated in the opening chapter with accounts of relationships, such as parent and children, disabled person and carer, and therapist and client. The book concludes with specially commissioned readings from scholars in the field. This text is published for the Open University course D317 Social Psychology.
Foreword - Jerome Bruner Introduction - Dorothy Miell and Rudi Dallos Exploring Interactions and Relationships Relationships in Detail - Alan Radley The Study of Social Interaction Creating Relationships - Rudi Dallos The Psychodynamics of Relating - Kerry Thomas Change and Transformations of Relationships - Rudi Dallos Examining the Wider Context of Social Relationships - Dorothy Miell and Rosaleen Croghan Conclusions - Dorothy Miell and Rudi Dallos READINGS Gender Differences in Close Relationships - Robert Hinde A Gender Sensitive Perspective on Personal Relationships - Arlene Vetere The Experimental Study of Relationships - Michael Argyle A Humanistic Approach to Relationships - Richard Stevens A Sociological Perspective - Graham Allan
`[This book has] a lively style of presentation... The team has achieved an admirable overall coherence in representing the range of ideas, methodologies and modes of analysis that will be found in this area of social life... The organization of this book through theme-based chapters is logical and developmental, and its material is well communicated... accurate, concise and contemporary. Its special features... would certainly be attractive to serious readers interested in how social psychology applies to familiar areas of life, and it is likely to find a place on the reading lists of many future social psychology courses.' - Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology `Exactly how should textbook writers handle the jangling differences that characterize current scholarship on relationship? Miell, Dallos and their colleagues have admirably taken up this challenge.... The book is an achievement, both for its framework about relationships and for its instructional solution to the task of teaching contrasting theories.... Social Interaction and Personal Relationships succeeds as a textbook that teaches important ideas about interaction and relationships. The text should be seriously considered for any basic undergraduate course on the subject, as it offers an intellectually defensible viewpoint and demonstrates the value of adopting an interdisciplinary stance toward relationship study' - Contemporary Psychology `This is an extremely attractive book, well produced and well written... beckoning the reader to explore it. A prime aim is to engage the reader "in a debate central not only to academic researchers and clinicians but to their own lives", and it doubtless succeeds in this... The book covers a tremendous range and I found it very impressive... It is aimed not only at undergraduates but also at a wider, non-academic readership. It is sufficiently interesting and stimulating to attract this wider readership, as well as giving a social psychology overview and context which will be invaluable to students of the subject' - Counselling, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling `The book offers an exciting and integrated new perspective on relationships that is both thorough and stimulating... I think it is a most successful restructuring of the material that is valuable in itself independently of its obvious merits as a course text' - Steve Duck, University of Iowa `This excellent book breathes new life into social psychology. It examines how different theoretical perspectives can be brought to bear in understanding everyday social life - relationships between friends, lovers, therapists and clients... But it looks at these from the viewpoint not only of standard disciplines like sociology, biology and psychology, but also in the light of systems theory, feminism and other fresh viewpoints' - Jerome Bruner, New York University
