You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is the last volume in a series of four. Like the preceding ones, it is a record of papers and discussion by eminent personages who have studied child development from various angles.
The volume begins with a paper by Piaget in which he attempts to define common ground between the discussants. It is a highly abstract venture and meets with varying degrees of agreement, non-commitment, or, in the case of Grey Walter, a reply which is deliberately contingent.
The issues raised by Piaget are assembled under three headings: the actions of heredity, and the physical and the social environments. This scheme in principle might seem easy enough to apply, but when applied to specialities it becomes remarkably difficult. There is no common language and one feature of this volume is the search for it.
The fourth factor introduced into the discussion is development, and there follow lengthy discussions about whether this occurs in stages or is continuous. Here the concept of equilibrium is important since what we try to define as stages can also be considered as states of equilibrium.
The volume ends up with the following statement by Fremont-Smith which epitomizes the papers: “… my idea of a study group of this sort is one that generates a discussion which ends open-ended”. Premature conclusions are indeed studiously avoided, and if the reader is looking for them he will be disappointed. For those who want something more down to earth there are a number of expositions in each special field which are stimulating and informative about recent advances in the theory of child development. Professor Piaget's ideas are particularly fascinating, but those of others, amongst whom may be mentioned Erikson, Lorenz, and Margaret Mead, were of most interest to the reviewer.
Professor Bertalanffy was brought in to help to bridge the rather wide gaps between the exponents of each special discipline. He has been pioneering in the comparatively new field of general system theory which studies t