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To all students of the development of mind and personality, a new book by Arnold Gesell is of special interest. His life work has become one of the important cornerstones of our knowledge of how the infant becomes a child. Gesell has been a pioneer in reducing problems of the infant's psychological development to scientific standards, and to a rare extent has combined the qualities of systematic observer and the ability to interpret his detailed memoranda in terms of a basic concept of development. The result is a basic science of the normal mode of maturation of those inborn physiological capacities essential to psychological and social performance.
There is a cleanness about both the technique and conceptual vision of Gesell which is seldom muddied by work from other fields. He can frequently refer to the importance of social and environmental factors which he has not intensively studied without being sidetracked by the work of those who have. This perfectionist individualism has contributed both to the clarity of his work, and also to his scientific isolation. The psychoanalyst will be the first to point out that Gesell has studied only the building material and not the carpentry of the individual's personality development. Gesell himself says in the book we are reviewing (p. 13): 'Environment determines the occasion, the intensity, and the correlation of many aspects of behavior; but it does not engender the basic progressions of behavior development. These are determined by inherent, maturational mechanisms.' Freud's own reiterated views of the importance of constitution refer more especially to the hereditary determination of drives and 'choice of neurosis' than to the effectors which Gesell especially studies; but there is no essential contradiction. The analyst can find in Gesell's results much empirical material for checking his own inductions