The Psychology of the Child

What is meant by the psychology of the child, or child study? How, and when, did it begin? What are the modern methods followed to bring us to a knowledge of his inner nature? How, for example, are drawing and painting, or doll play, used to know the child's inner world and to give us a picture of his personality?

These are some of the questions around which this study will turn.

The study of the child is what is known as child psychology, and it now counts among the most important of studies; we see thousands of specialists in this field graduating from the institutes of the West.

The study of the child began in the seventeenth century. Before that age, people believed that children were merely small-bodied men and women, whose minds there was no need to understand or to study separately; they believed that in understanding the psychology of men and women they understood at the same time the psychology of children, and that childhood was a stage of preparing the child for manhood. Hence the most important thing the parents could do was to mold him according to their will, so as to make a man of him in a short time.

The theory distinguishing between the psychology of the child and that of the man was not known until the seventeenth century, when Comenius appeared with his two books, "The School of the Child" and "The World in Pictures," and showed that children differ from adults. In the eighteenth century came certain philosophers, such as Rousseau and Locke and other social educators, who began to write of childhood as a stage entirely different from the other stages of human life.

This theory developed appreciably with the American scholar Hall, who made it an independent branch and a study standing on its own in the universities, and this new school spread over the whole of Europe. The twentieth century has been called "the century of the child," because his study has become a school in itself, embracing all sides of his life and of his mental, emotional, social, and physical development. The period of the child's life from the first year to the sixth came to be considered his most important years, for in them he acquires the habits, the qualities, and the morals of which his personality is composed. This conclusion was brought out and studied by the analytic scientist Freud, who saw that most nervous and mental illnesses trace back, in the main, to the stage of childhood in its first six years. Thus the child at this stage became the subject of serious, profound study. In this way the methods and means that help toward knowing the psychology of children have advanced and developed across the generations, until in our own age they possess fixed rules and definite measures. I shall single out for discussion the most important of them:

1 – Drawing and painting

The child expresses, in a spontaneous, involuntary way, by means of painting, his inner world of feelings, inclinations, impulses, and disturbances. If the child is given — through persons specialized in his study — drawing materials of every kind and colors of every sort, and is left to set down on a white sheet whatever the natural impulses latent in his depths dictate to him, we find that he gives us a clear picture of his inner self.

The first things worth observing and analyzing in these pictures are: the colors — their selection and their placing on the paper; the lines — whether they are scattered, vertical, horizontal, or otherwise; the position and the space used. The use of red usually indicates that this child can express what is within him easily and freely, cares nothing for what those around him may say of him, and is also approachable and mixes easily with others, with a distinct personality of his own.

And so every color, line, and placing has its own special significance.

2 – The use of pictures

Giving the child pictures bearing, for the most part, figures close to his world and familiar to him — bearing various forms of man's daily problems — and leaving him to interpret them in answer to questions put to him: we then find that in explaining them he expresses what lies in his depths.

3 – The truth about the child can be reached by personally recording the particulars of his daily conduct, in everything he does and utters, over a period of time.

4 – Story writing

This method has expanded very greatly and has taken many forms. Among them: the child is asked to write a set of stories on subjects of his own choosing; from the choice of subject and the manner of expression his personality is deduced — his inclinations, impulses, and habits. Another kind is to play the children records of music and ask them to write a story or a picture inspired by it.

5 – Doll Play

If the boy is given a number of dolls representing the family in which he lives, and each of them is given the name of the family member whom the doll represents, the child begins to play.

By observing and writing down everything the boy does and says while playing — how he goes and strikes one doll, shrinks from this one, shows affection to that one, and so on — his feelings, and his way of feeling toward each member of the family, come to light.

In the light of the foregoing methods — which I have contented myself with mentioning briefly, without lengthening or elaboration, for lack of space, and which we have tested at the hands of certain specialists, mentioning in particular Dr. Najarian at the College — we see that these methods do truly disclose the child's inner world, and that they deserve a long, detailed study, which I hope in the future I may have the good fortune to treat at length.