Mental development in the child and the race : methods and processes / James Mark Baldwin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baldwin, James Mark, 1861-1934., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Child psychology.

Child development.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 496 pages)

Other Title:

Mental development in the child and the race

Place of Publication:

New York : MacMillan Co, 1903.

Summary:

"This book was begun as a series of articles reporting observations on infants published in in 1890-1892. In the prosecution of this purpose, however, I found it necessary constantly to enlarge my scope for the entertainment of a widened genetic view. This came to clearer consciousness in the treatment of the child's imitations, especially when I came to the relation of imitation to volition. This occupied my thought, the result being the conviction that no consistent view of mental development in the individual could possibly be reached without a doctrine of the race development of consciousness, --i.e., the great problem of the evolution of mind. I have a view to a possible synthesis of the current biological theory of organic adaptation with the doctrine of the infant's development. My book is then mainly a treatise on this problem. For this reason the question of arrangement was an excessively difficult one to me. The relations of individual development to race development are so intimate--the two are so identical, in fact--that no topic in the one can be treated with great clearness without assuming results in the other. The earliest chapters are devoted to the statement of the genetic problem, with reports of the facts of infant life and the methods of investigating them. There is a chapter on the detailed analysis of handwriting. Then follows the theory of adaptation, and a genetic view in detail of the progress of mental development in in its great stages, Memory, Association, Attention, Thought, Self-consciousness, and Volition"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.