James Mark Baldwin

Mental development in the child and the race

In his classic analysis of fundamental mechanisms of biopsychological development, James Baldwin argued for the interplay of habit and accommodation as expressed through the circular reaction. This view came to exert a significant influence on modern developmental psychology.

Social and ethical interpretations in mental development.

The first extension of the biopsychological view to social development. Addressing the question of how children became like-minded members of their cultural groups, James Baldwin identified mechanisms of social adaptation underlying the enculturation process.

If Black English isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?

ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE USE, ΟΓ the status, or the reality, of black English is rooted in American history and has absolutely nothing to do with the question the argument supposes itself to be posing. The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language. Language, incontestable reveals the speaker. Language, also, far more dubiously, is meant to define the other and in this case, the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him. People evolve a language in order to describe and this control their circum-

German psychology of to-day : the empirical school

Origin of the received view of the history of scientific psychology. Starting from Kants denial of the possibility of psychology as science on the grounds that it can be neither mathematical nor experimental, Ribot described Herbarts introduction of mathematization and Fechners use of experimentation as prerequisite to the emergence of the Wundtian laboratory.

James Baldwin, A Transition Interview

HALL: In an interview with Francois Bondy in Transition (January, 1964) you stated what would seem to be the novelist/political activists dilemma, namely, the necessity for a spokesman to simplify the facts of his political case, in order to communicate directly, and broadly, as opposed to the novelists need to remain faithful to the complexities of life in order to create a true image. Is this your dilemma, and if it is, how do you attempt to reconcile the conflicting roles?