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The Dynamics of Psychological Development ostensibly is an attempt by Dr. Alexander Thomas and Dr. Stella Chess to express the conclusions derived from their longitudinal studies of normal children and those impaired by congenital rubella. As Dr. Leon Eisenberg states in his Foreword, Thomas and Chess are espousing the idea that psychological development is a "transactional process with the individuality of child, parents, and life experience determining the resultant personality" (p. x).
This book indeed has some chapters that are informative and worth reading: e.g., Chapter V ("The Goals of Behavior: Task Mastery and Social Competence") stresses the process of socialization as a positive and gratifying experience for the child rather than one of frustration and deprivation. Chapter VI ("The Structure of Behavior: Abilities, Motivations and Styles") refers to techniques used by some researchers to study inborn individual traits, with the goal of identifying the children most vulnerable to psychological damage. It also considers the intriguing probability that the polymorphism of the human species is a desirable trait. Chapter VII ("The Process of Development: Interaction and Goodness of Fit") lucidly and convincingly demonstrates the authors' basic postulate, because it shows that the interaction out of which the organism develops is not, as is so often said, between heredity and environment. Rather, it is an interaction between organism and environment. Rather, it is an interaction between organism and environment. Chapter X ("Language and Its Developmental Significance") nicely summarizes recent works on language development. However, this book fails lamentably in a number of important areas: (1) the review of literature is significantly one-sided; (2) it provides little data; (3) the authors' theoretical position is often obscure, and their tenets sometimes hold inner contradictions; and (4) the authors seem to believe that their humanistic approach