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The reviewer has carefully read this book from beginning to end. His first feelings as he read the early pages were that it was a discourse largely along the lines of the old academic psychology with which he has long since severed his interests, this despite the fact that the book was
put forth as a contribution to the new Gestalt psychology. The long, tedious, and discursive analyses of experiments with apes and the critical examination of the reasons why chickens begin to peck as soon as they come out of the shell, were tiresome and seemed to be remote from human interest. The reviewer soon gathered, however, that despite these facts there was an under—current of the new Gestalt psychology and that the general theoretical statement of the aims of this psychology were really being practically worked into situations which were, for the most part, familiar to the psychology of a generation ago and then he thought that perhaps the humanizing of psychology had gone so far as to really force upon it certain common—sense points of view. Finally, when he came to the end of the book and to chapter VI, “The World of a Child,” he found that all that had gone before had been worth while. This chapter is an entrancing statement of an enormous amount of detailed work and criticism, and so he is glad to record that the original irritation which the book excited was more than fully allayed before it closed, and while he still would like to think of the ideal book which will trace the growth of the child—mind in terms considerably different from the authors, still he must express his profound respect for the industry and the learning which this particular book displays.
White.