Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.

CSULB, Department of Psychology

PSYCHOLOGY 361

Historical Figures in Developmental Psychology

Philosophical Views of Children

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Dualism: Separation of mind and body. Mind (= the soul) was the
proper study of theology; it was spiritual. The body was the proper
study of natural science. At the time, religious authority was very
strong. Descartes' position helped separate science from religion and
was critical to the development of modern science.

Innate Ideas: Descartes believed that some ideas were innate. These
included the idea of God (in the 17th century most people couldn't
even imagine there wasn't a God) and mathematics (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4).
Descartes is thus an intellectual forerunner of nativism.

Nativism = The view that behavior is innate -- that it is strongly influenced by the genes. In the history of developmental theory, Descarte, Rousseau, Darwin, Gesell (and MacDonald) are considered nativists.


John Locke: (1632-1704)
Tabula Rasa: The mind is a blank slate written on by experience.
Locke is thus an environmentalist on the nature/nurture question.
He stressed the importance of rewards, punishments and imitation
(social learning), and is thus a forerunner of 20th-century
behaviorism.

However, Locke believed that children were innately curious (as did
Rousseau and Piaget).

Locke is also known for his emphasis on early experience. (Freud is another
historical figure who emphasized early experience.) Locke believed that
children are most open to environmental influences when they are
young. He is generally optimistic about changing humans for the better,
but early intervention is best: "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree."

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Rousseau was a nativist, believing that children are born with a conscience and a sense of fairness. Human nature is good until corrupted by society. He had the idea of the "noble savage" living a moral life in the state of nature. Somehow modern society has become corrupt. (Anthropologists are still looking for such a pristine, innocent society!)

Rousseau, like Locke and Piaget, believed that children are innately curious and exploratory.

Like Piaget and Gesell, he stressed the idea of "readiness": Children have to be at the appropriate developmental level in order to benefit from instruction; i.e., they must be ready. One can't take a 4-year-old and try to teach him calculus.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection (Origin of Species, 1859). Darwin believed that at some important human behaviors were systems that evolved to serve certain functions.
E.g., the emotion of fear developed to mobilize the animal to deal with dangers. Many animals have this emotion. Darwin's book, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals shows drawings of dogs expressing anger and fear. Darwin believed that humans evolved from animals and that our emotions were a legacy of our animal prehistory.

With the exception of G. Stanley Hall (see below), Darwin did not have much influence in developmental psychology until approximately 1970 with the rise of the ethological perspective and sociobiology. (See Chapter 2.)

G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)

Hall was the first Ph. D. in psychology, the founder of the American Psychological Association. He used the questionnaire method which basically entailed asking people about their lives. This didn't get very far. His research and theories are not influential nowadays.

Hall was very influenced by Darwin, particularly the principle that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Ontogeny = the development of the individual; Phylogeny = the evolution of the species. The latter part of the 19th century was much influenced by embryology, and especially by findings that the early stages of embryos looked liked our evolutionary ancestors. For example, very early stages of the human embryo look like a fish; there is a tail and gill slits. This fit well with the evolutionary idea that humans evolved from other vertebrates. It confirmed the general idea that ontogeny recapitulates the evolution of the human species. This idea is now making a comeback in theories of cognitive development. Children's cognitive development recapitulates stages found in monkeys and chimpanzees.

Hall is a maturationist. Maturationists believe that behavior is strongly influenced genetically; behavior matures or grows, much like a tree grows, because it is under genetic control.

Hall's stages:
Infancy (0-4): Animal phase
Age 4-8: Hunting and Fishing cultures
Age 8-12: Savage and Primitive (tribal) human cultures.
Age 12-25: 18th century idealism
Age 25' : Contemporary civilization.

Hall's philosophy of child rearing: Don't worry about children's bad behavior; they'll outgrow it. Consistent with his maturationist theory.

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

Watson is a descendent of Locke. His school of behaviorism insisted on studying characteristics that were observable and measurable. This opposed the Introspectionists who attempted to get at what was going on inside the mind by introspection.

Child begins with a set of reflexes which are then shaped by Pavlovian conditioning (classical conditioning).

Know what classical conditioning is:
Unconditioned stimulus
Unconditioned response
Conditioned stimulus
Conditioned response.

Watson had a lasting influence on methodology. By insisting that psychology basically he saved psychology from the Freudians. He is the reason psych majors have to take courses in statistics and experimental design.

Arnold Gesell (1880-1961)

Gesell was a maturationist and a nativist: There is an "inner timetable" to development. (Know what the terms 'maturationist' and 'nativist' mean and which theorists fall into these more or less synonomous categories.)

Gesell established Norms and Milestones -- ages when children typically are able to do things like turn their head, take their first step, walk unassisted, etc. These norms are still in use today.

Gesell, like Rousseau and Piaget, believed that children have to be ready to profit from experience -- the 'Readiness idea": they must be at the appropriate mental stage to profit from instruction. For example, Gesell authored a book that informed teachers and parents about the skills children should have before they attempt kindergarten.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Freud: Infant is vulnerable, parents are important.

Libido = psychosexual energy that is discharged at various erogenous zones. These erogenous zones change depending on the child's stage of development.

Oral stage: Libido discharged at the mouth
Anal Stage: Libido discharged at anus
Genital Stage: Libido discharged at sexual organs

Repression of Libido leads to neurosis. The child may become fixated at a particular stage. For example, if the mother prevents the child from experiencing oral pleasure, the child will repress the libido and develop an oral personality as an adult -- constantly talking, smoking, criticizing, etc. Anal personality comes from repressing libido during the anal period.

Tripartite Personality:

Id: Governed by the pleasure principle; irrational, often unconscious; present at birth

Ego: The reality tester characterized by logical thinking as studied, e.g., by Piaget. This develops at the end of the first year.

Superego: Children's conscience; their ideal behavior. Children come to identify with parents and society by repressing the pleasure seeking Id. This develops at about age 7 with the resolution of the Oedipal conflict. The Oedipal conflict occurs during the Phallic stage (age 3-5). Boys want to have sexual relations with their mother but fear their father will will castrate them (castration anxiety). Boys eventually repress their sexual desire and identify with their fathers.

Stages:

Oral 0-1-1/2; Issue is feeding regularity.
Anal 1-1/2 '3; Issue is toilet training
Phallic 3-5; Issue is the Oedipal conflict
Latency 6-12 Libido is repressed by developing superego;
child
focuses on training and schoolwork
Genital 12'adult; Re-emergence of sexual desire, no longer
directed at mother.

Freud (like Locke) believed in early experience. Children's personality is basically shaped by age 4.

Live many modern psychologists, Freud proposed an interactive model as an answer to the nature/nurture question. Nature produces the Id, but the Id interacts with the environment, mainly parents. Freud thus rejects the nature (nativist, maturationist) perspective but also rejects the nurture (environmentalist) perspective.

Influence: Psychoanalysis has never had a huge influence in developmental psychology. Up to 1960, the main influences were behaviorism, Piaget, and Gesell. The main influence was via Robert Sears in the 1960s. Sears tried to test whether toilet training made a difference but didn't find any support for the theory. As a result psychoanalysis was not influential after that.

However, John Bowlby was influenced by psychoanalysis in developing his theory of attachment. We will discuss this later in the course.

Freud adopted the Retrospective method: Adult patients were asked about their childhood. No observation of children was done until the theory was well formed. Observations are basically irrelevant to the theory. For example, no one has ever verified the Oedipal theory, but psychoanalysts still believe it. It continues to be in taught in psychoanalytic institutes.

Frederick Crews, New York Review of Books, 1994:
1.) Freud's ideas have received no independent corroboration. Freud had no regard for rival lines of explanation; there was no attempt to make testable hypotheses. His ideas are "vague".
2.) Freud had no therapeutic successes, but he often lied about his success. Some of his cases, such as the case of Dora, posed huge ethnic problems. Dora was a teenage girl. Freud attributed her rejection of the pedophilic sexual advances of an older married man to hysteria and sexual repression. The analysis was based entirely on preconceived ideas and circular reasoning in which the patient's negative emotional response to the psychoanalytic hypothesis is construed as evidence for the hypothesis.
3.) As indicated by the Dora example, Freud ignored the contaminating effect of the therapist's suggestions.
4.) Freud's seduction stories were his inventions, later ascribed to patents and then to patient's fantasies. He used the coercive power of suggestion to verify his theories. This has led to the "false memory syndrome" studied by modern psychologists.
5.) Freud's movement was more like a politburo snuffing out deviation than like a science. There was a secret committee of loyalists who purged dissenters. Disagreement was a sign of psychopathology.
6.) Psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience insulated from the normal give and take of scientific debate. It is "the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century."