Aaron S. Carton

Imagination and Its Development in Childhood

For the old psychology, which viewed all forms of man’s mental activity as associative combinations of accumulated impressions, the problem of imagination was an irresolvable puzzle. This psychology was forced to reduce imagination to other functions. The essential feature that distinguishes imagination from other forms of mental activity is that it does not repeat combinations of accumulated impressions but builds a new series of impressions from them. The very foundation of the activity that we refer to as imagination is the introduction of something new into the flow of our impressions, the transformation of these impressions such that something new, an image that did not previously exist, emerges. The problem of imagination was therefore inherently irresolvable for associative psychology since it represented all activity as a combination of elements and images that are already present in consciousness.

An Experimental Study of Concept Development

Until recently, a major impediment to the study of concepts has been a lack of experimental methods that would allow the investigation of their formation and their psychological nature.

Introduction: The Fundamental Problems of Defectology

Only recently, the entire field of theoretical knowledge and practical scientific work, which we conveniently call by the name of “defectology,” was viewed as a minor part of pedagogy, not unlike how medicine views minor surgery. All the problems in this field have been posed and resolved as quantitative problems. Entirely accurately, M. Kruenegel2 states that the prevailing psychological methods for studying an abnormal child (A. Binet’s3 metric scale or G.I. Rossolimo’s4 profile) are based on a purely quantitative conception of childhood development as impeded by a defect (M. Kruenegel, 1926). These methods determine the degree to which the intellect is lowered, without characterizing either the defect itself or the inner structure of the personality created by it. According to O. Lipmann,5these methods may be called measurement, but not an examination of ability, Intelligenzmessungen but not Intelligenzpruefungen (O. Lipmann, H. Bogen, 1923), since they establish the degree, but neither the kind nor the character of ability (O. Lipmann, 1924).

The Diagnostics of Development and the Pedological Clinic for Difficult Children

Pedological research on unmanageable children finds itself in a peculiar situation indeed. Researchers have quickly learned how to use an overall methodology, as it has taken shape recently in our theory and practice. And they have begun to apply this methodology, not without success. As a result they have been capable of dealing successfully with a series of relatively simple, but practically important, problems which life’s conditions require of pedology. This methodology quickly exhausted its possibilities, however, revealing the relatively narrow limits of its applicability. The investigators themselves unexpectedly discovered that they were drinking from a much shallower glass than they had imagined. The boundless possibilities which they had foreseen for this pedological methodology were, in practice, quickly exhausted; the methodology easily overcame the first and easiest obstacles in its path but proved powerless when confronted by more serious tasks, such as those arising from the very process of research. Thus, methodology is currently in a state of deep crisis, and its resolution should determine the next and most immediate steps in the development of pedological research into problem childhood.

The Problem of Mental Retardation

Until recently, within the problem of mental retardation it has been the intellectual deficiency of a child, his feeble-mindedness, that has occupied the foreground as the basic feature. This is locked into the very definition of such children, who are habitually called mentally retarded or mentally deficient. All other sides of such a child’s personality are regarded as arising secondarily and as depending upon that basic intellectual defect. Many are inclined not even to see real distinctions between the affective and volitional spheres of these children and of normal children.

Defect and Compensation

In those systems of psychology, which place at their center an integral approach to personality, the idea of overcompensation plays a dominant role. “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger” is the idea formulated by W. Stern when he pointed out that strength arises from weakness and ability from deficiencies (W. Stem, 1923, p. 145). The psycho- logical trend created by the school of Adler, the Austrian psychiatrist, is very widespread and influential in Europe and America. This so-called “individual psychology” (i.e. the psychology of personality) has developed the idea of overcompensation into a whole system, into a complete doctrine about the mind. Overcompensation is not some rare or exceptional phenomenon in the life of an organism. An endless number of examples can be given demonstrating this concept. Rather, it is to the highest degree, a common and extremely widespread feature of living matter. True, until now no one has worked out an inexhaustible and comprehensive biological theory of overcompensation. In a series of separate areas of organic life, these phenomena have been studied so thoroughly and their practical application is so extensive that we have substantial grounds for talking about overcompensation as a scientifically established, fundamental fact in the life of an organism.

Memory and Its Development in Childhood

No other chapter of contemporary psychology has produced more disputes than we find in idealistic and materialistic attempts to explain the phenomena of memory. It is impossible to discuss this chapter of contemporary psychology without considering the debates that have emerged in this domain over the past several decades. Only by analyzing these disputes can we fully and clearly understand the way empirical material has developed in this domain of psychological research.

Compensatory Processes in the Development of the Retarded Child

We are indebted to medical clinics for their diagnostic descriptions of mentally retarded children, yet such clinics took little interest in the development of the child afflicted by retardation. Because of the character of the practical problems facing a medical clinic, such institutions could not probe deeply into the problem of child development inasmuch as child retardation relates to a number of clinical forms which are readily ameliorated and in general are not responsive to therapeutic treatment. These forms of underdevelopment did not become the topic of serious investigation in clinics because there has never been any practical incentive toward this end nor have efforts been made in any other direction of clinical thought. Clinics were mainly interested in the possibility of determining those symptoms which can facilitate our recognition of mental retardation and distinguish this form from other similar handicaps—but it could do no more. With these goals in mind, clinics raised the problem of the development of the oligophrenic child. They established that an oligophrenic child does develop—not regress—just as the mentally ill child does. This fact is reiterated by a series of other indicators. With the help of these indicators, a child’s mental debilitation is discerned and distinguished from other forms externally resembling it.

Defectology and the Study of the Development and Education of Abnormal Children

The question at hand today is how to break out of biology’s hold on psychology and to move into the area of historical human psychology. In reference to our subject, the word social has great significance. First of all, it marks as social everything cultural, in the broadest sense of the word. Culture is the product of man’s social life and his public activity; therefore, the very formulation of the question of cultural development takes us directly into the social plane of development. Furthermore, it would be possible to illustrate that a sign, a tool, located outside the organism, is separate from personality and is essentially a social organ, a social means. Even further, we could say that all higher functions are based not in biology nor in the history of pure phylogenesis; the mechanism at the very basis of higher mental functions is a social mold. We could say that the final goal toward which the history of a child’s development leads is the social genesis of higher forms of behavior.

The Problem of Speech and Thinking in Piaget’s Theory

The research of Jean Piaget6 represents a new stage in the development of theory concerning the speech and thinking of the child; a new stage in the development of theory concerning the child’s logic and world view. His work is of substantial historical significance. Beginning with a new perspective on the problem, and using the clinical method he developed, Piaget has carried out profoundly insightful investigations of the child’s logic. Piaget himself, in concluding the second of his works, clearly and precisely noted the significance of his approach in the study of this old problem.