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The world of Merleau-Ponty is that of childhood…. the text achieves at times the beauty of those pages of surrealism which also attempt to restore to man the wonders of his first days.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who died in May 1961, was acclaimed as an outstanding European philosopher and intellectual. His major work, Phenomenology of Perception,9 is regarded as a classic of the phenomenological movement and French existentialism. He occupied the prestigious Chair of Philosophy at the Collége de France. Merleau-Ponty's thinking ranged encyclopedically through classical philosophy, contemporary psychology and social science, art criticism, history, and political theory.11, 13, 14, 15, 16 Along with his intimate associate Jean-Paul Sartre, he founded the magazine Les Temps Modernes and established himself as a controversial figure in postwar French political circles.7
It is not widely known, however, that Merleau-Ponty held the Chair of Child Psychology at the Sorbonne during the years 1949-1951. All together Merleau-Ponty delivered seven courses dealing with a wide variety of theoretical and methodological issues in child psychology. He also made lengthy digressions into related areas of adult psychology. Merleau-Ponty was thoroughly familiar with contemporary schools of psychology, and his Sorbonne lectures draw on the contributions of the behaviorists, gestaltists, psychoanalysts, existentialists, physiological psychologists, and Piaget.
Very little attention has been given to Merleau-Ponty's lectures