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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 51, no.

1,
January–February 2013, pp. 5–17.
© 2013 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 1061–0405 (print)/ISSN 1558–0415 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/RPO1061-0405510101

V.V. Zen’kovskii

The Psychology of Childhood


Chapter 1

This chapter describes the tasks and historical development of child psychol-
ogy until 1920s. The principal directions in child psychology and its place in
the system of psychological disciplines are presented. The main methods of
child psychology at the beginning of the previous century are introduced.
The psychology of childhood has as its task studying the spiritual life [dushevnaia
zhizn’] of a child and gaining insight into the psychological distinctiveness of
childhood. In the system of sciences of the child (“pedology”), the central place
must of course belong to childhood psychology, and if childhood psychology does
not currently occupy such a place, if its conclusions and principles for now do not
exert a leading influence on the other sciences of the child, this can be explained, on
the one hand, by the weak development of general anthropology (general teaching
about the person), and on the other hand, by the slow development of childhood
psychology itself. But in principle, the key to childhood—to its theoretical and
practical problems—lies in the mental uniqueness of childhood. The further along
we move in understanding mental life of the child, the more clearly its features ap-
pear before us and the more distinctly the central position of childhood psychology
is delineated in the system of sciences of the child.
To understand the modern-day situation of childhood psychology, it would be
very interesting to recall its historical development. Despite the fact that an imme-
diate interest in the mental life of the child has always existed, childhood became

English translation © 2013 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text, V.V. Zen’kovskii,
Psikhologiia detstva: S 54 risunkami i 6 diagrammami (Leipzig: Izdatel’stvo Sotrudnik,
1924), pp. 11–23.
Translated by Stephan Lang.
The notes translated here were incomplete in the Russian original.—Ed.

5
6 journal of russian and east european psychology

the object of scientific study very late. For the first time we see the appearance of
a special treatise on the soul of the child is at the end of the eighteenth century; the
fact that this scholarly interest in childhood proceeded from medical doctors needs
to be recognized as characteristic to the highest degree. Medical doctors were the
first who needed to confront the fact of the uniqueness of childhood: the teaching
about childhood diseases and about the specific features of the course of common-
place diseases in children meant that the specific features of childhood had to start
being thought about for the first time. Children cannot be given the same medical
treatment as adults; the very development of a child’s organism makes the question
of intervention in the life of a child’s organism especially complex and subtle. All
this naturally brought out the need for special study of the child.
Rousseau had an enormous influence on the development of interest in the soul
of the child with his famous work Émile. The individual positions advanced by
Rousseau are not as important as his true love for childhood, deep respect for the
personality of the child, to the internal logic of the process taking place with the
child. In Rousseau’s book one can feel the desire to enter into the child’s internal
world, a desire to pay heed to the mysterious growth of the child’s personality, to
find out the paths of his development. Despite the fact that the entire picture painted
by Rousseau in Émile often bears the stamp of sentimental fantasy, his book is still
effective to this day because of its love for the internal world of the child and its
genuine and deep interest in it. Not for naught has Rousseau’s influence been felt on
two genius pedagogues who opened a truly new page in the history of pedagogy—
Pestalozzi and Fröbel. The pedagogical views of Leo Tolstoy, bearing the bright
stamp of his genius, also evolved not without the influence of Rousseau’s ideas.
The first book to lay the foundation for the scientific study of the spiritual life of
the child appeared at the end of the eighteenth century—the book by the medical
doctor [Dietrich] Tiedemann contained observations about the development of a
child’s mental capabilities (Beobachtungen über die Entwicklung der Seelenfähig-
keiten bei Kindern, 1787). Somewhat later Passevitz published a book in 1800 on
the first eight months in a child’s life. The history of the study of childhood at this
time of life is still little researched—it is enough to point out that Tiedemann’s book
was remembered for the first time in the second half of the nineteenth century and
was initially known only from a French translation. At any rate, the scientific study
of childhood, which began at the end of the eighteenth century—maybe specifically
under the influence of Rousseau—declines again after that. Pedagogical thought
was working very intensively at this time; the study of the child’s organism and
of childhood diseases was developing—and this also includes the development of
child psychopathology—but for childhood psychology, an interruption had come
until the mid-nineteenth century. We shall note but one of the books that appeared
during this time gap—a book by [Albertine] Necker de Saussure—L’éducation
progressive ou étude du cours de la vie (vols. 1–3, 1828–38). [E.I.] Löbisch’s
book—Istoriia razvitiia dushi rebenka [Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele des
Kindes; History of the Development of the Mind of the Child]—appears in 1851.
january–february 2013  7

A new book about the soul of the child—by the name of Kind und Welt [The Child
and the World]—appears in 1856; it has great success and belongs once again to
a medical doctor—[Berthold] Sigismund. In 1859, [Adolf] Kussmaul publishes
his—Untersuchungen über das Seelenleben des neugeborenen Menschen; somewhat
later (in 1867), [Ferdinand] Altmüller’s book appeared—Über die Entwicklung der
Seele des Kindes. Appearing at the end of the 1870s was Charles Darwin’s study
(A Biographical Sketch of an Infant), which raised interest in childhood among
natural scientists. And to this day, the problems of mental evolution exert a strong
influence on the formulation and resolution of various questions associated with
childhood—in this respect, Darwin’s work had its significance. At that same time, at
the end of the 1870s, the Russian psychiatrist I.A. Sikorskii published his research
on fatigue in children. In 1881, [Karl] Vierordt’s famous book (Physiologie des
Kindesalters) appears, which created an era in the study of the organism of the
child, and in the next year, 1882, the work of another physiologist, [William] Preyer
appeared (Die Seele des Kindes. Beobachtungen über die geistige Entwicklung
des Menschen in den ersten Lebensjahren), which started a new era in the study
of the soul of the child.
Preyer’s book, alongside the above-mentioned works, had a truly enormous
influence on the development of childhood psychology; more precisely, with this
specific work childhood psychology begins its existence as a separate science. The
reason for this lies first and foremost in Preyer’s method: the foundations of scien-
tific method in the study of childhood were laid for the first time here, a model for
the gathering of scientifically applicable material was given for the first time. On
the other hand, Preyer’s book also had high value in the sense that it attempted to
provide a systematic overview of the development of all of a child’s mental pow-
ers. Preyer displayed great psychological intuition in his book—and in this sense
it has not lost its significance even to this day. In connection with this, it would
be appropriate to mention that childhood psychology has a very small amount of
precise and scientifically applicable material at its disposal in our time as well. After
Preyer’s classic observations, scientific value is represented by the observations of
[Milicent Washburn] Shinn (Notes on the Development of a Child, vol. 1, 1893–99;
Development of the Senses, vol. 2, 1907), the spouses Clara and William Stern (I.
Die Kindersprache; II. Erinnerung, Aussage und Lüge in der frühen Kindheit, as
well as the very valuable material in W. Stern’s book—Psychologie der frühen
Kindheit, 2d ed.). We shall likewise mention the observations by [David R.] Major
(First Steps in Mental Growth, New York, 1906); [Ernst] Scupin ([Ernst and Gertrud]
Scupin, Bubis erste Kindheit, 1907; Bubi im 4–6 Lebensjahre, 1910); [Edmond]
Cramaussel (Le premier éveil de l’enfant, Paris, 1911), and [Kurt Walther] Dix
(Körperliche un geistige Entwicklung eines Kindes: I. Instinktbewegungen, 1911;
II. Die Sinne, 1912; III. Vorstellen un Handeln, 1914). And this is really everything
of any value that childhood psychology has at its disposal in the capacity of precise
and scientifically applicable material.1 All kinds of autobiographies and confessions,
of course, have a certain value, and often convey very interesting material; there is
8 journal of russian and east european psychology

something for the psychologist to make use of in artistic works devoted to child-
hood as well. But all this unfortunately suffers from the shortcoming that it does
not provide precise chronological indications, and subsequently always prompts
the suspicion that the authors may allow themselves many inaccuracies and even
fabrications for the sake of a picturesque narrative. Nevertheless, the paucity of
material forces psychologists to use even insufficiently verified material, which
makes the question of the methodology of our science especially complex.
But let us return to the historical development of childhood psychology.
Interest in childhood psychology increases noticeably after the appearance
of Preyer’s book. The fruitful activity of the famous organizer of pedagogical
research—[G. Stanley] Hall—begins in America, Shinn’s diaries appear, and one
of the creators of modern-day childhood psychology—James Mark Baldwin—
makes his appearance. An exceedingly important book by [James] Sully—Etiudy
po psikhologii detstva [Studies of Childhood] appeared in England. But a new
age in the development of our science was made by the works of Karl Groos,
who engaged himself in the study of play. At first his book dedicated to the play
of animals (Die Spiele der Tiere) appeared, and then his second wonderful book,
dedicated to the play of humans (Die Spiele der Menschen), saw the light of day.
These books by Groos as well as his lectures on the life of the spiritual life of a
child (Das Seelenleben des Kindes. Ausgewählte Vorlesungen; a fifth edition has
now come out) advanced a biological understanding of childhood, which gained
a very firm foothold in modern-day childhood psychology. Groos’s books had
foundation-laying significance, because in them the distinctiveness of childhood
was portrayed for the first time with total clarity and certainty, and the study of
childhood, as a self-contained, stand-alone phase in a person’s development, was
outlined for the first time. If before Groos childhood psychology represented theo-
retical interest only in connection with the problems of genetic psychology and
problems of mental evolution (which still manifests itself strongly in our science
to this day), then after Groos’s works, problems of childhood psychology acquired
stand-alone theoretical significance. By this, Groos contributed most of all to the
emergence of childhood psychology as a separate and stand-alone science.
Baldwin must be noted right alongside Groos as another one of the creators of
modern-day childhood psychology. If Groos has the honor of having established the
biological understanding of childhood, to Baldwin belongs the invaluable achieve-
ment of having clarified the sociomental [sotsial’no-psikhicheskikh] conditions of
a child’s mental development. The one-sided connection between the problems of
childhood and issues of mental evolution is definitively overcome in Baldwin’s
works; Baldwin’s childhood psychology comes into the closest possible connec-
tion with social psychology. Baldwin’s works that deserve mention are: (1) Mental
Development in the Child and the Race; (2) Social and Ethical Interpretation in
Mental Development; and (3) Thoughts and Things, vols. 1–3.
If we look at current works on childhood psychology, we must say that the litera-
ture is increasing here at an exceedingly rapid pace. Among French authors, in first
january–february 2013  9

place we must put [Alfred] Binet, the founder in Paris (in 1898) of a society for the
study of the psychology of the child (Société libre pour l’étude psychologique de
l’enfant). Binet was an outstanding psychologist and organizer of scientific research
studies. The journal Année psychologique, which came out under his editorship
is a rich “archive” on childhood psychology. Especially valuable are the various
studies by Binet and his collaborators researching abnormal children—precisely
from these works emerged Binet’s idea about the “measurement of intellectual
level,” which has played such an enormous part in the study of the intellectual life
of children. Binet first described his method in an article, ”Méthodes nouvelles
pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectuel des anormaux” (Année psychologique,
vol. 11, 1905).2
...
To Binet belongs another whole series of works on childhood psychology. Of
these we shall mention first and foremost his wonderful book L’étude experimentale
de l’intelligence, which can be called a classic work on “clinical psychology.” In
this book, Binet lays out the results of his research on two girls in the course of
one and a half years.
...
Of other French authors, it is also appropriate to mention [Édouard] Claparède,
who wrote a splendid book—Psychologie de l’enfant et pédagogie expérimentale
[Russian translation: Eksperimental’naia pedagogika i psikhologiia detstva].
Claparède also published many individual articles in the journal put out by him
(together with [Théodore] Flournoy)—Archives de psychologie. We shall likewise
mention [Jules Gabriel] Compayré, whose main book appeared long ago in Rus-
sian translation (Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe razvitie rebenka) [in English, The
Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child, 2 vols., New York [1896–1902]);
and [Frédéric] Queyrat (La logique des enfants, as well as L’imaginaion et ses
variétés chez l’enfant). The books of [Bernard] Pérez (Les trios premières années
de l’enfant and L’enfant de trios à sept ans), which have been translated into the
Russian language among others, are of no great value.
Of the English and American literature on childhood psychology, besides the
works by Baldwin, Shinn, Sully, and Hall mentioned above, we shall also cite the
books: [Kathleen Carter] Moore, The Mental Development of a Child (New York,
1896); [Alexander Francis] Chamberlain, The Child: A Study in the Evolution of
Man (a Russian translation exists).
The German literature on childhood psychology is very rich. Without mention-
ing the specialized journals, in which one can constantly find many works on the
psychology of the child, we shall point out the most valuable books. First and fore-
most we note [William] Stern’s book, which recently came out in a second edition
(Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, 1921). This book is valuable not only for its ideas
but also for its rich factual material (a translation of the first edition exists in the
Russian language). Groos’s lectures on the mental life of a child that I mentioned
have now come out in a fifth edition (there were two translations of different editions
10 journal of russian and east european psychology

of this book in the Russian language; one of them came out under my editorship).
Also worthy of mention are the books of [Adolf] Dyroff (Über das Seelenleben
des Kindes, 2d ed., 1911), [Robert Eugen] Gaupp (Psychologie des Kindes, 4th ed.,
1918; an old Russian translation exists), [Karl] Bühler (Die geistige Enwickelung
des Kindes, 2d ed., 1921), [Erich] Klose (Die Seele des Kindes, 1920), and [Kurt]
Koffka (Koffka Die Grundlagen der psychishen Entwicklung, 1921). Of all these
books, the works of Stern, Groos, and Bühler have the greatest value. I cannot
avoid bringing up here the literature on the psychology of the mental life of a child
that is connected with a well-known direction in modern-day psychopathology—
namely with [Sigmund] Freud’s school. It is known that Freud’s school ascribes
special significance in mental illnesses to those “conflicts” in the mind of a child
that arise very early (according to the thought of this school—on sexual grounds).
This generates deep interest of this trend in childhood psychology.3
...
In regard to Russia, it must be admitted it has always had a great interest in
the problems of childhood, and this has particularly increased in recent times.
Absolutely every one of the valuable books on childhood psychology has been
translated in Russia; an entire series of books on issues of childhood was pub-
lished in Moscow under the general editorship of [P.N.] Vinogradov and [A.A.]
Grombakh (it was in this series, in fact, that the works of Baldwin were published,
by the way). There were attempts to publish a separate journal dedicated to child-
hood psychology—Psikhologiia i ditia—which, to the best of my knowledge,
was discontinued in the second year of publication. Several specialized journals
dedicated to the problems of childhood have been issued in recent years, to the best
of my knowledge. Of the books dedicated to childhood, first place has to go to an
outstanding but unfortunately forgotten book by [E.I.] Konradi, Ispoved’ materi,
where the history of the spiritual maturation of two children is described with
an extraordinary knowledge of the matter and on the basis of direct experience.
Although Mrs. Konradi’s book has a predominantly pedagogical character, it is of
paramount significance for the childhood psychologist as well. Standing very high
is the well-known book by [Petr] Lesgaft, Vospitanie v sem’e i shkole, where we
find the famous classification of children’s types. In the Entsiklopediia semeinogo
vospitaniia, which used to come out in Petersburg, several installments were also
dedicated to the psychology of the child.
An anthology of articles published by the Pedagogical Academy under a com-
mon name—Dushevnaia zhizn’ rebenka—was almost exclusively composed of
compilation articles. Much more valuable are the articles belonging to the pen of
[N.E.] Rumiantsev, and published in Vestnik psikhologii. Already during the time
of the great war, a book by Privatdozent [K.N.] Kornilov, Psikhologiia rebenka,
came out in Moscow.4
Not having the opportunity in the present conditions to do a complete biblio-
graphic survey of the literature on childhood psychology that has appeared in Russia,
I think that even the publications I have noted bear witness to the high interest of
january–february 2013  11

Russian pedagogical circles and of Russian society in the world of the soul of a
child. Starting with the book by professor [I.A.] Sikorskii (Dusha rebenka), which
has sustained two editions in the Russian and German languages, a free-standing
Russian literature on childhood psychology was constantly developing. The Peda-
gogical Institute in Petrograd; an Institute in Moscow, founded under the leadership
of professor [G.I.] Rossolimo; the Pedagogical-Medical Institute, created by Pro-
fessor Sikorskii in Kiev—such were the scientific institutions dedicated specially
to childhood. Two institutes of preschool upbringing (in Petrograd and Kiev) had
special departments for childhood psychology. All this also bore witness earlier to
the growing interest in the mental life of a child—and in total association with this
stands the circumstance that everything valuable from the literature on childhood
psychology has been translated into the Russian language.5 Where Russia has had
it the worst is with the gathering of precise and scientifically applicable material.
Only the diary of [N.I.] Gavrilova [and M.P. Stakhorskaia, Dnevnik Materi, 1916],
published in Moscow, and Zapiski materi by [Elena] Krichevskaia deserve to be
noted. Several articles and books dedicated to the question of the impact of war on
children appeared in connection with the Great War. I shall note an anthology of
articles published by the Kiev Fröbel Society under my editorship: Voina i deti. A
book by A.V. Vladimirskii on the awakening of sexual life in children was prepared
for publication, as well as my book, Rol’ sem’i v zhizni rebenka, but I do not have
precise information on whether they have appeared in print.6

The participation of medical doctors and natural scientists in elaborating the


problems of childhood exerted an indubitable influence on the basic tendencies
of our science, which developed for a long time in connection with the problems
of genetic psychology and problems of mental evolution. Bühler’s recently pub-
lished book, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, stands entirely on this point of
view and can serve as the best example of this trend in childhood psychology.7
Its culmination point should be considered the activity of St[anley] Hall, who
aspired to apply the law of biogenetics to mental evolution. And yet this trend has
nevertheless lost its leading significance—even though the problems it brought
out have not yet found their resolution, and even though its influence manifests
itself to this day in individual works. Groos’s books, externally so close to this
current, developing a biological understanding of childhood, have nevertheless
laid the foundation for a fruitful new direction in childhood psychology. This new
direction studies childhood, as such, focusing on the internal world of the child; it
seeks the keys to the mental distinctiveness of childhood in childhood itself, and
in this sense it has for the first time provided a rationale for childhood psychology
as a stand-alone science. Childhood, according to Groos’s view, is a distinct phase
in a person’s development, having its distinct tasks and its place in the maturation
of the personality; the biological indispensability of childhood imparts to it an in-
ternal appropriateness and fullness. The development of childhood psychology in
the direction indicated by Groos has in many ways transcended those boundaries
12 journal of russian and east european psychology

within which Gross himself had contemplated the study of childhood, but the main
idea informing Groos’s constructs—awareness of an internal logic, a harmony in
the correlation of mental powers in a child, a clear awareness of the actual mental
distinctiveness of childhood—this remains the dominant factor in the development
of contemporary childhood psychology.
Our science has had less success in the direction founded and primarily expressed
by the American psychologist Baldwin. The weak influence of his ideas can be seen
at least in their lack of indications in regard to the newest best works on childhood
psychology—those of Groos, Stern, Bühler (if we do discount several remarks by
Groos, who apparently knows Baldwin’s works, but does not appreciate them at
all in the parts in which they relate to the life of the soul of a child). Of course, this
can be explained by the weak development and a certain lack of popularity of social
psychology as a whole—but the nonetheless weak influence of the ideas of Bald-
win, who connects the problems of childhood psychology and social psychology,
has a lamentable influence on the development of our science. Upon exposition of
Baldwin’s teaching, we shall see for ourselves that it is fundamentally significant
in understanding the development of the life of the soul of a child.8
In connection with the issue of various trends in childhood psychology, I would
like to touch upon the question of its place in the system of psychological knowl-
edge. Psychology has grown and expanded into a whole organism of knowledge,
representing a system of sciences—but we still lack a complete and final classifi-
cation of the psychological disciplines. This is associated primarily with the fact
that the newly splitting off psychological disciplines are not yet completely clear
concerning their methodological distinctiveness and how they are connected with
other psychological sciences. In order to give a vivid example of this, I shall allow
myself a small digression and shall point to the uncertainty in the characterization
of pedagogical psychology. Everyone emphatically recognizes the right to the ex-
istence of this science, but its topic is defined differently by different authors even
until now. If we cast aside those constructions of pedagogical psychology in which
it was nothing but a combination of facts of general psychology and pedagogical
conclusions made from them9—on the strength of which pedagogical psychology
cannot be called a separate science—then we must note the following definitions
of it. Encountered most often is the understanding of pedagogical psychology as
a science closely related to childhood psychology, but covering that same mate-
rial from a “pedagogical perspective.” Written in this spirit is [Max] Jahn’s book
(Psychologie als Grundwissenschaft der Pädagogik), which is popular in Germany,
and a book by Privatdozent M.M. Rubinshtein (Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia),
which is widespread in Russia. Other authors orient pedagogical psychology at
differential psychology—to such belongs a new book on pedagogical psychol-
ogy by [Georg] Grunwald (Pädagogische Psychologie, 1921. [P.F.] Kapterev
(Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia) sides with this same trend to some extent. In my
lectures on pedagogical psychology and in studies dedicated to its problems, I have
already for a long time connected pedagogical psychology with social psychology,
january–february 2013  13

seeing the task of pedagogical psychology in the study of the psychology of the
pedagogical process, as a distinct form of social interaction. In accordance with
this, analysis of the “pedagogical milieu,” as a sociopsychological prerequisite
of the pedagogical process, is being introduced into the system of pedagogical
psychology for the first time.
It is already clear from these perfunctory remarks on pedagogical psychology
how hard it is in our time to build a system of psychological knowledge and to
indicate the place of childhood psychology in it. For those who associate childhood
psychology with questions of mental evolution, it enters into the composition of
a more general discipline—genetic psychology, or, as it is sometimes called more
narrowly these days—“developmental psychology” (Entwicklungspsychologie).
Baldwin, as we have seen, pulls together childhood psychology with social psy-
chology, since the principal condition for the development of the mental life of a
child consists of the mental-social milieu in which it develops. Finally, childhood
psychology has long converged with differential psychology, insofar as certain
variations of the overall mental structure were seen in childhood from the very
beginning. The latter point of view seems to me to be fundamentally true. The
task of childhood psychology consists of studying the mental distinctiveness of
childhood—and this definition alone already brings our science closer to differential
psychology, which indeed purports to elucidate the typical variations observed in
concrete manifestations of the life of the soul. “Childhood” forms a certain “natural
group,”10 alongside which one could place natural groups such as “mental maturity”
or “old age.” That the latter groups have not yet been separated out as a subject of
special study is connected with the fact that little work has been done with them
and little attention has been paid to the features of their mental distinctiveness. Also
entering into the group of differential psychology are ever more distinct fields of
psychological knowledge such as sexual psychology and the psychology of women,
which is rather well developed already.
Without offering a rationale in all parts of the classification of psychological
disciplines to which I adhere, I shall allow myself to present it here, in order to
indicate the place of childhood psychology (see Table 1).
In the present introductory chapter, we must still address the question of the
methods of childhood psychology.
Of course, what has significance for general psychology remains in force for
childhood psychology—that the main method must be self-observation. But in what
sense is this applicable to childhood psychology? Children have so little interest in
themselves, in their internal life, the capacity to distinguish and analyze—in relation
to the world of internal life—is still so weakly developed in them, and finally, the
ability to precisely formulate and clearly express their emotional experiences is also
so still weak in them that to make use of children’s self-observation is completely
impossible. Of course, we, adults, retain those or other memories from our child-
hood in our memory, and these allow us, with greater or lesser success, to delve
into the mental life of a child. But, first, our memories are very fragmentary and
14 journal of russian and east european psychology

Table 1

Classification of Psychological Disciplines

I. Theoretical sciences
about the mind

A. of the person a. The psychology of 1) General psychology (with


the individual person subdivisions: physiological
psychology, experimental
psychology)
2) Genetic psychology
3) Psychopathology
4) Differential psychology (as a
special domain of general
psychology)
5) Childhood psychology
6) Individual psychology (character
analysis)
b. The psychology of 1) General social psychology
sociomental
phenomena
2) Pedagogical psychology
3) Economic psychology
4) The psychology of language
(Sprachpsychologie)
5) The psychology of legal life
6) Religious psychology
7) The psychology of moral life
B. Sciences about the 1) Zoopsychology
mental life of other
living creatures
2) Phytopsychology(?)

II. Applied sciences 1) Psychotechnics (applied


about the mind psychology)

incomplete. The incomplete and the fragmentary nature of our memories makes them
very unreliable guides when analyzing the mind of a child. But even more important
than this quantitative paucity of memories is their weak qualitative applicability: our
memories are not only insufficiently complete, but substantive changes are very often
encountered in them. According to Pushkin’s famous expression:
All is fleeting, all will pass;
What has passed will then be pleasant. [from his 1825 poem, “Esli zhizn’ tebia
obmanet . . .”]
january–february 2013  15

Our memory rarely retains heavy and unpleasant emotional experiences, it cer-
tainly aspires to move them back into the depths of the soul—and on the contrary,
what our memory retains habitually bears the features of undeniable softening and
weakening of the “sharp edges.” Together with this, great influence is exerted on our
memories by remoteness from those events that we recall: the later we remember
those or the other facts, the further we move away from them, the more our under-
standing of them changes, our mental “set”—which has such a great influence on
the content of the memories that come floating to the surface for us—changes.11
Just as far-off objects seem to us in many ways different from the way they do
when perceived up close, so too does mental “distance” significantly change what
we perceive with our mind’s eye, that is, our memories.12 From this it is clear that
those remnants of self-observation that are retained in the soul from our childhood
in the form of memories cannot serve for us in the capacity of base material when
constructing childhood psychology. All the more substantive is the significance of
childhood memories in another respect: they have a very deep influence on our
understanding of childhood, developing in us an immediate, intuitive accustomation
[vzhivanie] to the life of the soul of a child. Without conveying precise material
to us—since they are incomplete and fragmentary—our memories from the time
of childhood maintain in us a capacity for an innate sensitivity to what children
being observed by us are experiencing emotionally. It is precisely thanks to these
memories and to the intuitive understanding of the child’s soul developed by them
that external observation gets its scientific value in childhood psychology. It must
be noted, by the way, that in general psychology too, the role of “self-observation”
also consists primarily of its making external observation possible and productive,
opening up for us the internal meaning of the facts being observed and making pos-
sible for us “soperezhivanie” (Einfühlung) into the mental life of another person.
In this manner, the principal method of childhood psychology is external
observation of children. To keep a watch on the development of a child from the
first days of his life, to note the appearance of new sides in his reactions, in his
understanding of those around it, in his independent motions to keep a watch on
the development of each and every mental function and their interrelations—
here is the task of external observation. This task is still so little and so weakly
resolved! The fact is that systematic observations are possible only of one’s own
children, when the observer is naturally always close to the children and knows
them from the first days of life. But it is precisely this circumstance that weakens
the value of the observations because they are limited by not-large material. The
individual characteristics of a child are not infrequently taken for typical ones,
and chance phenomena are elevated to the status of laws—while the natural cor-
rective that could have been made by comparing the given child with others is
lacking. It should not be forgotten that our attention to new phenomena is always
regulated by our understanding of our previous experience—that is, to speak in
psychological language, it is regulated by our apperceptions. Substantive facts
pass before us, we observe them—but if we perceive them “incorrectly,” that is,
16 journal of russian and east european psychology

we do not catch their distinctiveness, then our observations lose their value.
To separate out the interpretation of observations into a separate method, as
Bühler does,13 is, of course, flatly impossible: “pure” observations, into which not
a single grain of our own interpretations would enter, are impracticable—we are
always apperceiving—that is, we are aware of our interpretations in the light of those
or other images, ideas, moods, intentions. We can and should aspire to as “precise”
a description of the facts as possible, but it is not in vain that modern experimental
psychology, relying on protocols, that is, notes (on the part of those on whom the
experiment is being carried out) of what had been in the consciousness, demands that
experiments be conducted on people who know psychology well. This is done in an
effort to avoid the uncritical use of terms when describing facts—and this is true in
the sense that the interpretation of a fact unavoidably enters into any “description” of
it. This is why people who have a good familiarity with psychology can avoid gross
errors with the greatest success when describing facts. Stern14 insists that observations
of children must also be carried out by people who are psychologically educated.
This, of course, is good, but it nonetheless does not guarantee the complete reliability
of the material. I shall allow myself to point out that even in first-class psychologists
such as Binet (in his work L’étude experimentale de l’intelligence) and Stern (in the
work Erinnerung, Aussage und Lüge in der frühen Kindheit), we encounter erroneous
interpretations of the facts they report.15
For all that, external observation remains the only method for studying the
mental life of a child. Of course, the experiment is applicable in relation to children
as well; thus, one English scholar applied the experimental method in relation to
a six-month-old child during a study of discernment of colors among children.16
From children’s motions, from their reaction, we can judge about those or other
mental processes. Among the supplemental methods of observation, we must
particularly note the study of the facial gestures of children. The physiognomic
method, as one of the variants of observation, has great significance in childhood
psychology—and in this sense it is a great pity that all of the diaries that have to
be used are not furnished with copious photographic snapshots of those children
on whom the observation is being carried out.17

We have familiarized ourselves with the historical development of childhood


psychology, with its place in the system of psychological knowledge, and with
its methods. Before we go in medias res, into the study of the mental life of the
child, we must stop at the fundamental principles of the modern understanding
of childhood. These principles too often remain without effect on the analysis of
individual processes in a child—unfortunately, this is so. We are attempting in the
present book to summarize the scientific study of the mind of a child, to connect
this summary with general principles and in such a manner to get closer to a syn-
thetic understanding of childhood—but unfortunately, this is still too difficult, the
time has not yet come for this. More than a few complications lie in the fact that at
each step one has to deal with great differences of opinion in general psychology,
january–february 2013  17

which one has no opportunity whatsoever to avoid. Although the basic intention
of the present book could not be fulfilled to the end, I nevertheless do hope that
the very foundations of a synthetic understanding of childhood have been outlined
here with sufficient clarity.

Notes

1. A book-anthology in which material on childhood psychology is gathered has recently


come out in a fourth edition (G. Bäumer and Lili Droescher, Von der Kinderseele, 1921)—but
this book has no scientific value because of its uncritical selection of material.
2. The best survey of the bibliography on this issue and of the modifications of Bi-
net’s method can be found in William Stern’s new book (Die Intelligenz der Kinder und
Jugendlichen, 1920).
3. With respect to the question of the application of the psychoanalytical method to
children, see Stern’s energetic objections to this in a special article dedicated to this issue,
in Ztschr. f. angew. Psychol., vol. 8.
4. Many articles on general and special issues of childhood psychology were placed in
a whole series of pedagogical journals (Vestnik vospitaniia, Russkaia shkola, and others),
and sometimes in other journals (Vestnik psikhologii, Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii). We
shall likewise remind the reader about the labor of Mrs. Manaseina and about the works of
A.V. Vladimirskii.
5. Shinn’s journals remain untranslated, even though they had been slated for translation
in a series of books being published under the editorship of P.N. Vinogradov and [A.A.]
Grombakh.
6. In my book Vvedenie v pedagogiku, having long ago come to light (in Kiev), several
chapters are dedicated to problems of childhood as well.
7. A thorough and deep analysis of the questions arising for childhood psychology as it
converges with the teaching on mental evolution is given by Koffka in his interesting book Die
Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung. Eine Einführung in die Kinderpsychologie, 1921.
8. In my study O sotsial’nom vospitanii, published, to the best of my knowledge, in several
editions (in Moscow and in Kiev), I have already had occasion to set out Baldwin’s ideas.
9. Sully’s book on psychology, in a new Russian translation titled Pedagogicheskaia
psichologiia, is an example of such constructions.
10. The teaching about “natural groups” is outlined very well by [Hugo] Münsterberg
in his book on psychotechnics (Grundzüge der Psychotechnik, 1920).
11. On the role of the “set” in the content of incipient images see Koffka’s book Zur
Analyse der Vorstellungen.
12. See [Richard] Baerwald’s interesting study: Gesetze der psychischen Distanz.
13. [Karl] Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, 2d ed., p. 57.
14. William Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, 2d ed., p. 8.
15. About Binet see my study Po povodu raboty Bine o pamiati; as concerns Stern, he
erroneously interprets facts concerning lying by his children.
16. [Helen Thompson] Woolley, ”Some Experiments on the Color Perception of on In-
fant,” Psychological Review, 1909. This method was first indicated by Baldwin in his work
dedicated to childhood psychology.
17. In his splendidly elaborated methodology for maintaining journals when observing
children, Stern (Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, pp. 12–14) unfortunately makes no men-
tion of this whatsoever.

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