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In the preface of this book the author states: 'I have therefore tried, in a brief compass, to expound clearly and simply the most fundamental points of psychology which have a direct bearing on the development and training of children, and to apply them to the everyday problems of family life'. The book is divided into six parts: Introduction, Some Basic Motives and Influences on Conduct, Unconscious Influences and Abnormal Reactions, General Intelligence and Special Abilities, Stages of Development of the Child, and Further Main Problems of School and Home.
Although Dr. Valentine seems to borrow from psychoanalytic theory and principle, he is highly critical of Freud and his contributions. 'What has been said about the prominence of the abnormal is closely connected with the popular idea that psychology is identical with psychoanalysis, the system of mental examination and treatment which was originated by Freud… But the plain fact which I want to emphasize here is that there is a vast body of psychological knowledge which has been accumulated by careful observation, experiment, and statistical treatment which owes nothing to the psychoanalysts or to the medical psychologists (psychiatrists), but which has a very great bearing upon the education of children and upon our own everyday lives.' He does not describe this 'vast body of psychological knowledge'. 'Freud is largely responsible for another popular illusion: that psychology is chiefly concerned with sex, and that the repression of sex is the sole cause of those minor mental disorders called neuroses.'
In the Introduction Dr. Valentine warns parents on the dangers of relying on common sense and the 'parental instincts' for the guidance of children. He speaks of this 'parental instinct' without qualifying or defining the term, but rather illustrates his point by giving an example of a young woman who developed depressions because of deprivation of love in early childhood; and a second case 'in which the