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This is a particularly bad example of the de haut en bas type of Child Psychology, where the adult explains from inaccessible heights of grownupness what he or she thinks children believe, feel, and know. It will of course be widely read, because Dr. K. Kimmins has a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for “knowing about children,” and will be
appreciated by those whose only knowledge of them comes from the same artificial source.
How poignantly one remembers, in the days of one's own youth, the misery of encounters with these adults who were supposed to be such a success with children and of whom they were supposed to be so fond. Their main idea was to be “funny” (at the child's expense), to keep up a constant fire of witticisms, only understood by other grown-ups present, while we stood by trying to see where the fun came in, trying to be polite and remembering how much one was supposed to like this person. If they could just once be able to see themselves with the pained, critical eyes of the child, know a little of what it thinks really, instead of what they think the “youngsters” think about them, their self-confidence might be shaken.
One says might advisedly, because such self-confidence has no conscience, only vanity, and to pentrate the defenses of vanity is no easy task.
The few sound and true things in this book have been taken from Freud and others, but of course in a book of this type no acknowledgments concerning their source are made.
White