Library & Cultural Services: Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies: Online Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Online Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Academic dictionaries & encyclopaedias are important places to start your research, especially if you are new to a topic.

They summarise existing research, and are especially useful in helping define terminology and concepts, assisting you to get a basic understanding of the subject or idea. Articles in encyclopaedias can also point you towards some of the key literature on a topic.

Do not rely on Web sources, as these are often unreliable!

A great starting point for Psychoanalysis is the PEPWeb Glossary:

PEP Consolidated Psychoanalytic Glossary
PEPWeb has integrated several of the key Psychoanalytic glossaries into a consolidated document (search for "consolidated glossary" in PEPWeb to access). In addition to the Language of Psychoanalysis (Laplanche and Pontalis), PEP has integrated: the Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis (Skelton), Glossary of Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts (Moore and Fine), the Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (Hinshelwood), and Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts (Auchincloss and Samberg, 2012) . Also includes the EPF Glossary of Psychoanalysis in Europe (Junkers), which provides a mapping of each psychoanalytic term across several languages

Other useful online dictionaries & encyclopedias provided by the Library include:

A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis by Andrew Samuels (1986)

The first dictionary of psychoanalysis by Richard Sterba (1932)

The Freud encyclopedia : theory, therapy, and culture by Edward Erwin (2002)

Freud's world : an encyclopedia of his life and times by Luis A. Cordon (2012)

An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis by Dylan Evans (1996)

The new dictionary of Kleinian thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius (2011)

If your research involves concepts from social theory or Sociology then take a look at some of the high quality reference resources on the Sociology subject guide

For the social sciences more broadly, the library subscribes to Oxford Bibliographies Online and Oxford Research Encyclopedias, which are excellent starting points for your research and updated regularly with new articles.

Likewise, SpringerLink is a useful resource, we have access to reference works in the Humanities & Social Sciences. Some of these encyclopedias are "living reference works" which are regularly updated with new content.

In Childhood Studies, the Oxford Bibliographies Online (Childhood Studies) module contains some excellent articles.
See also the SAGE Encyclopedia of Children & Childhood Studies (2020).
We have several encyclopedias relating to children's literature, including the International companion encyclopedia of children's literature (2nd ed., 2004), The Oxford encyclopedia of children's literature (2006), and the Continuum encyclopedia of children's literature (2005)