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This stimulating and interesting book contains contributions at a symposium held on the occasion of the Loyola University Centennial celebration. Each of the authors is well known and has influenced or created his own field. Erikson, the last speaker, sums up beautifully what Piaget, Spitz, and Lorenz had to say, and adds his own ideas. In her epilogue, Maria Piers discusses the contributions of Peter Wolff and Lois Murphy, and concludes with her own thoughts about how to bridge the gap between science and theory, on the one hand, and clinic and education, on the other.
Piaget describes himself as follows:
The truth is, I am neither a maturationist nor a neobehaviorist. I am an interactionist. What interests me is the creation of new thoughts that are not preformed, not predetermined by nervous system maturation nor predetermined by encounters with the environment, but are constructed within the individual himself, constructed internally through the process of reflexive abstraction and constructed externally through the process of experience… [Piaget considers it essential] that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it (p. 25).
This construct of Piaget's is of a purity that only rarely exists. The ability of the child to use his intellect with such freedom is based upon what Spitz calls 'fundamental education', i.e., the development of certain functions at optimal times. It presupposes an undisturbed mother-child relationship. It also requires that the child be