Free Online Psychology Textbooks
Whether you are studying a single course in psychology or earning your psychology degree online or off, textbooks can easily become as expensive as your tuition. The good news is that many psychology professors feel your pain and are working to make free textbooks and course materials available online. From scholarly psychology-related papers to complete psychology textbooks, online resources are available to students if they simply know where to look.
Free Online Textbooks
As always, the first place to start is your own college or university's website. Many of the colleges and universities that offer open Courseware and online degree programs have textbooks written by members of their psychology faculties online and that should always be the first place you look for free materials.
This list is far from complete but it is certainly a good place to start looking for free course materials to assist your studies in psychology.
Historical Pschology Texts
Project Gutenberg - Works by Sigmund Freud - Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 and the Psychology Bookshelf where they have organized many of the psychological books together.
Google Books - Contains both modern and classical psychology-related materials. Some are included in their entirety and others are excerpts. Copyrights will vary and you might need to research each publication before using.
Classics in the History of Psychology - huge resource of historical classical works in the field of psychology.
Collections of Free Online Psychology Textbooks
Connexions - "a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc." At the time of this writing, a search for "psycology" yielded 339 results.
HippoCampus - As of this writing, it does not appear that they have any pyschology textbooks but they do have a course overview with brief information about each topic.
The Open University - Free online university providing extensive course materials including 10 units on topics in the study of psychology.
U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) - free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. You'll have to search for your topic but there's tons of material here much of which would be good for students pursuing a masters degree in psychology or even their P.h.D.
National Institutes of Mental Health - free mental health materials from short introductions to detailed information onmental disorders and research.
Learning Technologies Centre - student written textbooks on Educational psychology.
ONLINE READINGS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURE - a collection of articles on psychology and culture organized much like a textbook.
Archive.org - collection of over 4,000 results for the term "pyschology" including a mixture of modern and historical works on a wide range of topics.
WikiBooks - brought to you by the same people who created WikiPedia, this site is still in its early stages but does have a growing list of content. From what I've seen the content is still fairly limited, but the warning label on the Surgery section, "Notice!: This Wikibook is by no means intended to be a guide to "at-home" surgery. Surgical illness should only be managed by a professional medical expert(e.g Surgeon)." gave me a chuckle and makes for a good reminder that wikis, by their nature, can be edited by anyone.
Wikibooks - link to the subject catalog for books on psychology. Subtopics include:
Clinical Psychology(2)
Developmental Psychology(0)
Analytical Psychology(2 works on dreams)
Personality Psychology(2)
Biological Pyschology (2)
Cognitive Psychology (4)
Abnormal Psychology (6)
Social Psychology (9)
Educational Psychology (8)
Individual Online Psychology Textbooks
Sample Book Chapter - prepublication sample chapter from Jonathan Baron and Michael Siepmann of the University of Pennsylvania of their book. Chapter title is - "Techniques for creating and using web questionnaires in research and teaching"
Principles of Behavioral Pharmacology - previously published in 1990. The copyright has now been asigned to the authors C. Robin Timmons and Leonard W. Hamilton who are now making this work freely available online. Do keep in mind that this psychological textbook may contain out of date information regarding specific drugs.
Body, Identity and Interaction: Interpreting Nonverbal Communication - by Allan Canfield, Ph.D., full text with linked index.
Sleep Syllabus - This reference calls itself a syllabus but in reality it is more like a textbook which was designed for "undergraduates, graduate students, medical students and post-doctorial scholars.
The Psychology of Cyberspace - The basic psychological features of cyberspace, online since 1996 and updated regularly. Written by John Shuler P.h.D. Department of Psychology Rider University.
Merck - Professional manual for Psychiatric Disorders
Dr. C. George Boeree - Personality Theories online e-text from Dr. Boeree, Psychology Department, Shippensburg University. Text is available in English, Spanish and German.
Statistic at Square One - statistics textbook written for medical researchers.
Inferential Statistics - written by Richard Lowry, Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Vassar College.
The Theory and Practice of Online Learning - Terry Anderson is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University.
Freud and His Critics - Paul Robinson, University of California Press, 1993.
The Nature of Consciousness The Structure of Life and the Meaning of Matter - from the site, "A comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Cognitive Science, Neurobiology, Linguistics, Philosophy of Mind, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Thermodynamics, Evolutionism, theories of dreams, theories of emotions and theories of consciousness. "
Conflict Managmenet - Party-Directed Mediation: Helping Others Resolve Differences
The Joy of Visual Perception: A Web Book by Peter K. Kaiser of York University
Taking ADvantage - from the site, "a book on the physical and cultural evolution of human beings, how that evolution has affected human subconscious processing of stimuli, and how advertising takes advantage (thus the title) of that processing by creating stimuli. "
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation.
Adolescence and Education, Volume V Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents - published in 2006, full book is for sale but this link includes 3 sample chapters.
Psychology 100 - course materials from San Bernardino Community College District including an online psychology textbook, course notes and even hints from former students. Files are in PDF, PPT and other formats.
ePsych - an electronic psychology textbook. What little I looked at is full of friendly and engaging graphics and concepts are explained in simple language.
Shippensburg University Online Resources - the faculty have put together a series of articles that read like excerpts from textbooks.
Psychology: An Introduction - Free online psychology textbook website by Russ Dewey, Ph.D. This textbook is made available online and used by Mike Nielsen in his own introductory psychology classes.
Holland's guide to psychoanalytic psychology and literature-and-psychology - Norman Norwood Holland (1990)
Laughing, a psychology of humor - Norman Norwood Holland (1982)