ABSTRACT
ON r e a d i n g the title of this chapter students will be of two minds as to the need of including the study of development in a general course in psychology. Some will say, ‘Let us get on at once to the behaviour of the adult. O f course children are fascinating creatures and we understand that psycho logists are investigating their behaviour in much detail and writing whole books on the subject (6,23). But for that very reason let there be a special course for those who are inter ested in children, and spare the rest of us.’ Others will point out that young adults are likely within a few years to have a very practical interest in certain children, so that it is well to be prepared. And even though a student is most interested in his contemporaries, still he will find it worth while to look at the adult from the developmental point of view. ‘How did he, or she, get like that?’ is a question we often ask when a person’s behaviour strikes us as being queer. If we knew the person’s past life, how he had been treated as a child, what problems he had encountered in growing up and how he had handled them, we should understand him better than we can by simply taking him as he is to-day. What is true regarding the peculiar individual is true of people in general: we can understand them better when we have learned something of their life history.
