Psychological development

“ It is now time to explore more carefully some of the more important of these byways into which the human mind may wander in the course of its development—byways which we have hitherto passed unnoticed, or at most examined with a hasty glance, as we traced the direct path of emotional development from childhood to maturity. ”

“ Byways in human development, both emotional and intellectual, Abnormalities of development at different levels may diverge from the main track at various points in its course—some near its origin in the infantile strata of the mind, some at a later stage of progress. ”

“ But mental physiology, or objective psychology, taking into consideration the vital conditions, can deal rationally with psychical development. The subject of mental growth is at the root of education. ”

“ Rather let the child grow, expand, mature, according to the law of its own being, giving it only encouragement and example, which are the light and air of mental and moral life. I am not conscious that any one has given us a philosophical, logical system of development, that relates to the physical, intellectual, and moral character ”

“ On the whole, few recent formulas have done more service in psychology than the Spencerian one that the essence of mental life and bodily life are one, namely, 'the adjustment of inner to outer relations.' The adjustment is to immediately present objects in lower animals and in infants. It is to objects more and more remote in time and space, and inferred by means of more and more complex and exact processes of reasoning, when the grade of mental development grows more advanced. ”

“ We are repeatedly impressed with the conviction that everything that is to be done for the specifically human development of the child must be connected with the fostering of this instinct to employ himself. ”

“ If one thinks that such thoughts do not come to so common a type of mind—that such feelings require a higher mental development—I would urge for their consideration the fact that it is the higher mental development that does away with such thoughts. ”

“ In exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recall the emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experiences, or the recollections of others. But the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the development of which is very largely subterranean. ”

“ Among cultural peoples, the child is surrounded by influences inseparable from the processes that arise spontaneously within its own consciousness. Folk psychology, however, in its investigation of the various stages of mental development still exhibited by mankind, leads us along the path of a true psychogenesis. ”

“ Let that portion of the brain whose functions pertain to the family relation, and to domestic life, fail in proper development and healthy action, and supreme attention be given to the culture of the intellect and moral sentiment, and, in process of time, its effects on character will become very manifest. ”

“ The first five years of growth, the infantile period, is of enormous importance for later development. In this phase the whole personality takes the shape and develops the characteristics that will distinguish it from that time on. ”

“ Here the definitions of the older psychologists are supplemented by the addition of the development factor. "Pleasure is the conscious effect of that which makes for the continuance of the bodily life or its advancement" (p. 126) , 'life' being here equivalent to life-development as well as to simple life. ”

“ This is a quite different thing from the notion of a small and feeble measure of heart and intellect in the child, to grow by degrees into the robust and noble spiritual development which, according to the psychical evolutionist, should distinguish the adult human being. ”

“ These two aspects, the intellectual, taken in its widest sense, and the moral, are not only of supreme importance, but, as experience shows, they in no wise run parallel courses. For an understanding of mental development in general, therefore, and of the relation of these its aspects, the early conditions of human culture are particularly significant. ”

“ The world of the inner processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art, legislation, society, and the like. ”

“ The close connection of the three phases of the mind's manifestation—knowing, feeling, and willing, gives the key to the question. Feeling cannot be developed alone apart from knowing and willing. In fact, if we attend carefully to the knowing and willing activities, the feelings, in one sense, take care of themselves. Two principles, therefore, lie at the basis of proper emotional development:
1. The mind must be allowed to dwell upon only those ideas to which worthy emotions are attached. We must refuse to think those thoughts that are tinged with unworthy feelings. ”

“ But our psychology strays off into pathology; our psychology is an artful study of the laws of a diseased condition and a diseased development, with{130} which healthy people have no concern.... But the chief thing is, we are not young,—in youth itself we are not young! ”

“ It indicates that the stages of mental growth anticipating adolescence form a separate and formative type of psychological study; that a knowledge of the changes which then take place is as vital a matter of human concern as can well be imagined; and that the shaping of interest, which then first buds, remains the supreme question of educational practice. Thus both for education and for psychology, adolescence has a directive importance. ”

“ Even these individual tendencies, however, enable the child to adjust himself to his surroundings, and thus assist that physical growth without which, as will be learned later, there could be no adequate intellectual and moral development. But besides these, the child inherits many social and adaptive tendencies—love of approbation, sympathy, imitation, curiosity, etc., which enable him of himself to participate in some measure in the social life about him. ”

“ It has wrought very much the same changes Studies of mental development in the race and individual. in the treatment of intelligence that it did in the biological sciences. Consciousness is no longer regarded as a fixed set of entities, but as a developmental process. ”

“ In fact, every condition or characteristic of a child that is in any way abnormal may lead on to other conditions and characteristics, often of a serious nature. The growth of adenoids, for example, may lead to a serious impairment of the mind. Poor vision may affect the whole life and character of the individual. The influence of a parent, teacher, or friend may determine the interest of a child and affect his whole life. The correct view of child life is that the child is affected, in greater or less degree, by every influence which acts upon him.
Significance of Development and Causality. ”

“ The universal interests of the day so strongly affect the child, the social consciousness so dominates the individual consciousness that even the natural law of development must to some extent yield if necessary. This social consciousness, the interests and purposes expressed in the child's social environment, present the experience of [174] the adult world dramatically and intensively, exerting as we might say, a creative power upon the mind. ”

“ Very important, too, for psychogenesis, are reports concerning the physiological condition and activity of children whose mental development has seemed to be stopped for months, or to be made considerably slower, or to be unusually hastened. ”

“ To do this he must know the child’s changing mental processes and the evolution of his moral perceptions which are manifested in the four periods of his development, in each of which he exhibits a personality as far apart as those of four individuals of widely differing natures. The boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age is four different personalities, and he requires four different methods of treatment. ”

“ Interrelation of Physical, Mental and Moral Development. — As to the interrelation of physical, mental and moral development, it must never be forgotten that the mind and the body must be studied together, 5 and that this is particularly true in considering the mind in management. 6 For the best results of the mind, the body must be cared for, and provided for, fully as much as must the mind, or the best results from the mind will not, and cannot, be obtained. ”

“ Then, along two main lines, we traced the development of character out of the purely instinctive tendencies of human life. We showed that impulses, which may be regarded as instincts in their active or executive aspect, may be controlled and developed into desires, which are relatively permanent and pervasive. Again, emotions, which in their origin appear at the instinctive level of life, may be organised into systematic sentiments, which colour the whole moral life. ”

“ Let them look into themselves, and their own course of development and its requirements, let them recall their own earliest years, then later stages of development, and look deeply into their present life. Next, let them look equally deeply into the life of the child and what he must require for his present stage of development. Having scrutinized what the child needs, let them scrutinize his environment, and first observe what it offers and does not offer for the fulfilment of such requirements. ”

“ Parents and teachers should look well to the matter of creating and establishing continuous and permanent states of feeling that are favorable to work and development.
Some people are permanently optimistic, others pessimistic. Some are always joyful, others as constantly see only the dark side of life. Some are always serious and solemn, others always gay, even giddy. These permanent emotional attitudes constitute temperament, and are due to fundamental differences within the body that are in some cases hereditary. ”

“ We may say, then, that the higher phases of mental development are characterized by the fact that the situations contain the products of reflective thought, presumably absent in the earlier stages; they are further characterized by a new purpose or end of consciousness, namely, to explain the situations hitherto merely accepted as they are given in presentation or re-presentation; they require deliberate attention to the relationships which hold good among the several elements of successive situations ”

“ This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further expansion, will be found in harmony with the 324 results of detailed analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more and more remotely representative. ”

“ Immaturity, maturity—the difference is only of degree; the child is father to the man; the psychology we trace in child life is fundamentally the same that obtains when the individual achieves that self-control and balance, that steadiness of aim, that harmonious union of bodily and mental powers which characterize maturity. Until we understand this merging and blending of experiences that make up a life history, we may regard as trivial the fleeting events and memories of childhood which the psychologist knows are significant and far-reaching. ”

“ They introduce values—the materials and influences—only as means of determining the presence of attitudes, of calling them into action, of modifying them, and of giving them application in different fields. They consciously introduce change on the basis of some hypothesis and measure the effect of the new influences on personality development. ”

“ There is little doubt but that the further advance of psychological science will reveal more intimately the working of those mechanisms with which we have here been dealing, and of whose nature and importance we are now beginning to gain some rough preliminary understanding. ”

“ The development and cultivation of the intellectual emotions depend, of course, upon education, training, exercise, and practice. The cultivation of the intellect (which has been referred to, in part, in the previous parts of this book, and which will be again considered in the chapters devoted to the intellect) results in the development and cultivation of the emotions accompanying intellectual effort. ”

“ It may bear comparison with one of the great changes in the mental life of the individual man, perhaps rather with the expansion and fixing of the mind which accompanies the passage from infancy into youth, than with the later steps from youth into manhood, or from manhood into old age. ”

“ Whether this belief will ever be vindicated—whether, for the matter of that, the discoveries of recent psychological research will prove of any real value—depends, of course, on the extent to which practical application is made by those having charge of the young, and particularly by parents. For the fact most surely established by the scientific investigators is that it is in the first years of life, and in the influences of the home, that the forces are set in motion which count for most in the making or marring of the individual’s character and career. ”

“ I wish to impress firmly upon parents and educationists this instructive example of child psychology. In the learned psychological discussions on the child's psyche we hear nothing about those parts which are so important for the health and naturalness of our children, nor do we hear more about the child's emotions and conflicts; and yet they play a most important role.
It very often happens that children are erroneously treated as quite imprudent and irrational beings. ”