Ebook: Manual of child psychology

This manual is an advanced-level textbook and is intended to be an addition at just this advanced level to the literature of general as well as child psychology. The book is presented as a series of separate chapters, each written by a recognized authority. Its purpose is to provide an accurate and coherent picture of some of the most important aspects of research in the scientific psychology of human development. Until comparatively recent years most of those who wrote upon the development of individual mental life elaborated essentially speculative theories. They attempted to describe man's so-called inborn instincts or the allegedly tabula rasa character of the mind of the young child. The present book is testimony to the fact that today psychologists and other scientists by the use of appropriate techniques have established a large body of important and reliable facts concerning the details of human mental development. Many practical as well as theoretical gains have resulted from the empirical study of the growth of the human mind. It will be clear to the reader of these chapters that it has been possible to formulate hypotheses concerning many specific aspects of mental development. These hypotheses have in many instances been tested in the laboratory or in controlled and quantifiable social situations. The conclusions so reached are very different from the vague verbal theories of the prescientific era of child psychology. One who is interested mainly in securing an understanding of adult mental life can gain many new insights into mental processes in general from a study of these chapters. A knowledge of the way in which adult psychological characteristics develop in each individual is fundamental to a complete understanding of such characteristics. The manual may thus be thought of as a factual introduction to the understanding not only of child psychology but also of the psychology of the normal adult human mind and even of the abnormal human mind.