The Growth of the Mind

An Introduction to Child-Psychology

K. Koffka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136315046
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume VIII of thirty-two of a series on Developmental Psychology. Originally published in 1924, this offers a study on the introduction to Child-Psychology, translated from the Author's Gestalt-Psychologie where he shares his hypothesis in explaining the problems of childhood and mental growth.

THE GROWTH OF THE MIND

CHAPTER I

PROBLEM AND METHOD

§ 1 — The Concept of Development in Psychology

WHEN we set out to make a psychological study of the world in which we live, we continually come upon facts that can be understood only after we conceive them as products of evolution. For a long time psychological theory was dominated by the question: How much of any observed fact can be explained as a process of development? And even to-day no agreement has been reached between the rival theories of empiricism and nativism, the first of which emphasizes the influence of environment, and the second the influence of heredity. With this situation before us it is surprising to learn — though historically not difficult to understand — that psychology, and German psychology in particular, has made so little use of the general principles of development. Indeed, from the point of view of experience, the problem of development has been dealt with in a very specialized way, which is mechanistic rather than truly biological. This tendency seems, however, to be drawing to a close; for the need is now felt of introducing the facts of psychology into a larger sphere, embracing other facts of life, from which our science has already departed too far. We must therefore try to envisage the problems of mental growth as they really are; we must seek to understand the peculiarities of mental evolution, and must try to discover its laws.

In accomplishing this task we should not forget that the subject of a psychological investigation is usually the mature and cultured$ “West European” type of man; a living being — biologically considered — at the highest level of development. In the first place, we are dealing with the human being as opposed to the animal. Since Darwin’s time, the conception of the descent of man has become common property, and we assume that what is valid in morphology and physiology must also have its significance in psychology. In the second place, we are dealing with representatives of a highly differentiated, as opposed to the members of a primitive, civilization. The world appears otherwise to us than it does to a negro in Central Africa, and otherwise than it did to Homer. We speak a different language from either, and this difference is a fundamental one, inasmuch as a real translation of their words into our own is impossible, because the categories of thought are different. In the third place, we deal with the adult as opposed to the child, though each of us was once a child, and has become an adult only by having outgrown his childhood.

We must not forget, then, that without a comparative psychology, without animal, folk-, and child-psychology, the experimental psychology of the human adult is and must remain defective. For this reason the psychology of the human adult has not infrequently and in various respects been unable to define its problems correctly, to say nothing of arriving at serviceable hypotheses. For instance, the error has often been committed of trying to explain a fact by merely referring to its evolution, thus building up a theory of evolution instead of first investigating the facts by comparative methods. Whenever one has had a genetic problem to deal with, the danger has always been great that one would accept the old hypotheses and apply them to his new facts, instead of first giving his facts an unprejudiced consideration.

We might think that in child-psychology the process of development would be obvious to every one; for we know the end-product to be an adult, with whom experimental psychology can deal, and the growth of the adult can be traced continuously from infancy. Yet this procedure is not so simple as it might seem; for as a matter of fact there is no principle of mental development which we owe directly to child-psychology¹ and, in so far as child-psychology makes use of any principles at all, they have originated either in experimental or in animal psychology. And yet there must be a genetic psychology; for the child-psychologist can follow the growth of a human being who in a relatively brief period of time changes from a simple inefficient individual into a highly complex and efficient man. It ought therefore to be possible to study this development in such a way that we can better understand the product, which is the human adult. Furthermore, if we could but understand this development, we should know more than we now know concerning the aims and methods of education.

This, therefore, is our problem: To discover the evolutionary principles of child-psychology. But although we must depend for assistance upon comparative psychology, we must not confine ourselves merely to transferring the principles of comparative psychology to our own field; instead, we must first test the value of these principles, and where necessary we must be ready to recast them.

§ 2 — A Provisional Consideration of the Problem of Psychology as applied to Child-Psychology. Mother and Child. The Observation of Events and of Conduct

Let us now try to formulate the problems of child-psychology more precisely. As a provisional definition of psychology, we may say that its problem is the scientific study of the behaviour of living creatures in their contact with the outer world. If we apply this definition to child-psychology, the thought immediately occurs to us that every mother is constantly doing just this; for no one knows the child so well, or understands his reactions and his impulses so thoroughly, as does his mother, by virtue of her unique and intimate relation to him. What need, then, of a child-psychology, if every mother knows her child better than the wisest psychologist can ever hope to know him? Without disputing this assumption the fact remains for us that psychology is scientific knowledge, since it employs a method which brings knowledge into conceptually formulated propositions. Psychology must have definite concepts; its statements are not made about “Infant X” or “Infant Y,” but rather about those features of babyhood common to all ordinary infants. The mother may know that her child is now in such and such a mood, that he desires this, that in giving utterance to a certain sound he means a certain thing, etc.; but she can not transcribe her knowledge in scientific terms. In the first place, she usually knows nothing about scientific terms; and, as we shall soon see, if we wish to secure scientific knowledge a different attitude is requisite from that which the mother finds most natural. In order to become a scientist the mother must suddenly become an “observer”; she must tear herself away from the intimate relation in which she lives with her child, so that she may replace each intuitive bit of knowledge — unreasoned, though undoubtedly certain — by a critical analysis of the facts. She must therefore learn to distinguish her interpretation from the simple facts of the behaviour itself. But this implies that she must maintain a “distance” from her child, and must, at least during the period of any scientific observation, cut herself off from the intimacy of her maternal relationship with him. Mothers are naturally unsympathetic with this procedure, and have, indeed, a primitive disinclination to allow their children to be thus practised upon by others. They can therefore be readily brought to oppose child-psychology in the fear that such observations and investigations may harm their children. On similar grounds an artist will often refuse to discuss theories of art. The mother has, of course, a right to protect her child from any injury that science might inflict, and in so doing she not only safeguards her child, but science as well; for an investigation which can injure the mental development of a child must almost certainly involve a wrong method of securing psychological knowledge. If one could reassure the mother on this point, much of her hesitation would disappear. Many mothers could even be won over to child-psychology, if it were made clear to them that they might thus benefit their children; for, although the mother’s knowledge is intimate, it is, for the most part, a momentary knowledge, and if psychology could impart to her a knowledge of the chief characteristics of development, she would be far better able to guide and protect her child.

Furthermore, if the mother can be reconciled to child-psychology she can render an invaluable service. We have already pictured the procedure of the scientific worker in contrast with that of the mother; we must now emphasize the disadvantages of the scientist when he proceeds alone. The scientist has his ready-made concepts with the aid of which he seeks to understand the facts as he observes them. From the outset his gaze is directed through spectacles suited to his scientific view. Yet who knows but these glasses may be coloured or ground in such a way as to produce a badly distorted image? To give a concrete example: Since the child-psychologist has a genetic interest, he is inclined to regard each childlike expression, from an adult point of view, as an incomplete or preliminary step in the direction of a later and more mature end. Yet this view fails to note the individual significance of the child’s expression per se, which can not be seen at all through such glasses. Here the mother can and must assist. She knows her child from immediate personal experience, without preconceptions; she knows him and loves him as he appears to her at the time, nor does she ever try to think of her suckling babe as an immature college student. Each of the child’s stages in development is of equal worth and importance to her, and she tries to understand each one of them in the same unprejudiced way. If she is successful in making her immediate knowledge available to others, she will have rendered the investigator a service not otherwise to be had; for she is able to furnish firsthand material which no scientific observer can obtain. This, to be sure, is a difficult task; for in its accomplishment she must be a good psychologist in the common-sense meaning of the word, just as a poet must be a good psychologist. A mother will then be able to teach the scientist how to observe naively; and nothing is more needed in psychology than naive observations made by those who have an intimate acquaintance with their material, and are at the same time able to assume a critical attitude towards it.

But a mother’s observations only supplement the work of the scientist. In order to understand the behaviour of a child in his contacts with his surroundings, one must undertake a great deal of troublesome special study, involving detachment and a thoroughly analytical attitude of mind. In this way it is possible to arrive at a view of the child “from without” by a method which I shall call the observation of events.² The essential thing here is to determine each single reaction-movement made by the infant. But what a child actually does can not be analysed into a mere sum of reactions; an adequate description of behaviour also involves the concept of conduct, and if we wish to achieve a “vital understanding” of the child’s behaviour we must also employ a method which I shall call the observation of conduct. In other words: In order to understand the child, we must know his reactions; but in order to understand his reactions, we must also know the child.

§ 3 — Functional and Descriptive Concepts. Three Kinds of Observation. The “Descriptive” Side of Behaviour

We can now go a step further, and ask what is meant by the observation of conduct — which brings us to the problem of psychological method.

When we describe the behaviour of mankind, we use two kinds of concepts derived from three different sources. The difference can be made clear by a few simple, commonplace examples. I observe a wood-chopper, and find that the performance of his task gradually decreases without his giving me any impression of indolence. I can control this observation by determining how many blocks he splits in a minute, and from this I find that as the time is prolonged the number decreases. I attribute this phenomenon, this decrease in his efficiency, to fatigue.

Or, to take another example, I see a stranger lose something in the street, and I recover it for him. Next day I meet him again, and he greets me; that is, he reacts towards me otherwise to-day than he did yesterday, apparently as a consequence of yesterday’s occurrence. I therefore say that he has recognised me, and I refer this fact to his memory.

Any one can reach these two conclusions concerning fatigue and the operations of memory who is able to observe these situations, for this is the general characteristic of a class of concepts where in any given case any one to whom the factual material is available will be able to decide whether a certain concept of the class is appropriate or not. We call this class of concepts functional concepts, and they are of the same kind as all other natural-scientific concepts.

In order to acquaint ourselves with the second class of concepts we may again refer to our two examples. Whereas in the first example either I or any one else can determine the fatigue of the wood-chopper by his decreased efficiency, the wood-chopper himself is able to make quite a different observation. He may find, for instance, that at the beginning of his work, “It went easy,” and that later “It went hard.” Or he may say: “At first I felt fresh, but now at the end I feel tired.” Likewise, the man who greets me in the street, thus leading me or anyone else present to infer an operation of his memory, may express himself by saying, “Your face, which yesterday was strange to me, now looks familiar.”

These expressions attributed to the wood-chopper and to the man in the street are quite different in content, yet in contrast with observations of the first sort, made with the help of functional concepts, they have this in common, that the report of the wood-chopper can be made only by the wood-chopper, and the remark of the man in the street only by himself. No substitution is possible, for no one but the wood-chopper can say whether the work is tiring him or not, and no one but the man in the street can decide whether my features are familiar to him.

Facts which any one can determine are called actual or real things or processes. For instance, that the wood-chopper becomes fatigued, or that the person to whom I was yesterday a stranger now greets me, these are real processes. But we must also introduce a term for those facts which can be established only by a single person; these we shall call experiences, or phenomena. In order to prevent misunderstanding, it should at once be noted that the employment of these terms does not imply that experiences are unreal — that they are illusory or of inferior rank as compared with real events. On the contrary, experiences have just as true an existence as do the processes we have chosen to call “real.” In order to define real processes we have used functional concepts, whereas the concepts we apply to experiences we shall call descriptive concepts. In our examples we have employed the descriptive concepts “feeling fresh,” “feeling tired,” “strange,” and “familiar.” We can also refer to the experience of freshness, of fatigue, of familiarity, of strangeness, or, to introduce a much-abused word, the impression of any of these.

The consideration of this point may be carried a step further, because it is of especial importance to an understanding of psychology. To some, what has been said will seem obvious. Naturally, no one can get out of his own skin into the skin of another; my toothache does not hurt my neighbour, however much I might wish it upon him. But it may be remarked by others that there is something quite artificial in all this discussion; for if any one greets me he must, of course, know me, and I can readily assure myself of this without hearing what he has to say about it. In everyday life my assurance is that when one laughs he is gay, when one weeps he is sorrowful, and I can know all that without his telling me.

Both parties seem to be right, and yet they contradict each other, and so we may infer that perhaps the matter is not so simple after all. Of course it is true that in everyday life we act as though we could ourselves determine what kind of experiences another person is having, but we must not forget that in so doing we often fall into error, and sometimes are deceived by impostors. A person may weep, and arouse our sympathy, when the real cause of his weeping is not sorrow but onions. With absolute certainty all we are able to determine is the fact of his tears, but not how he may feel about them. Yet our behaviour in daily life is neither stupid nor without value. On the contrary, to become a good psychologist in the popular sense of the term is something to be highly prized. There is a way of observing real happenings, particularly in the actions of a living creature, which in a previous paragraph we have called the observation of conduct. Such observation is much more closely related to experience than the observation of events, and, when rightly applied, results in the formation of functional concepts which go much deeper into the nature of the processes observed. It must be added, however, that “conduct” is less certain than an “event,” and must therefore be controlled by other forms of observation.

Turning to our examples, if the man in the street greets me to-day he must have recognized me, provided that one means by recognition a functional concept, a term to express certain operations of memory or conduct. In order to call his reaction a “greeting,” I must have made an observation of conduct, because an observation of events would refer only to certain movements of his body. But that I appeared to him as some one he knew, who looked familiar to him, is a thing I can not be sure of from the mere fact of his greeting me; because it is also possible that, sunk in thought, or deep in conversation, he may have greeted me quite “automatically.” Whether or not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Table
• Title
• Copyright
• TRANSLATORS NOTE
• preface1
• preface2
• content
• CHAPTER I: PROBLEM AND METHOD
• CHAPTER II: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
• CHAPTER III: THE STARTING-POINT OF DEVELOPMENT: THE NEWBORN INFANT AND PRIMITIVE MODES OF BEHAVIOUR
• CHAPTER IV: SPECIAL FEATURES OF MENTAL GROWTH
• CHAPTER V: SPECIAL FEATURES OF MENTAL GROWTH
• CHAPTER VI: THE WORLD OF A CHILD
• notes
• INDEX
• Endnotes