The Construction of Reality in the Child
The Construction of Reality in the Child
复制标题
儿童现实的建构
DOI:
10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.1956.10.1.157
复制
发表时间:
1956
影响因子:
2.5
通讯作者:
M. L. Blumberg
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
M. L. Blumberg
Margaret Cook. Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1954, 386 pp., $6.00. In an attempt to understand the ontogeny of human behavior, many investigators have studied the physical and psychological development of the infant and child. Many objective observations have been collated, correlated and interpreted, usually with an adult orientation. Among all of these studies, Jean Piaget's book presents a unique approach. Piaget possesses an unusual perspicacity and empathy which enable him almost to think with the infant. He offers a philosophical and psychological interpretation of spontaneous behavior as Well as reactions to the ingenious experimental situations which he created, using his own children as subjects. The author develops a dynamic exposition of the construction of reality in the child and the elaboration of the universe, by a systematic consideration of mental functioning during the first eighteen months of life. He analyzes the material from the point of view of four formal conceptual categories; the acquisition of object concept in the geometric sense, space, causality and time. Piaget is not concerned with motivation, emotional needs or the significance of specific interpersonal relationships. Yet, his work is compatible with the psychoanalytic theory of development and supplementary to it. The psychoanalytic concept of ego evolvement declares that awareness of the self is a function of awareness of differentiated objects in the outer world. Piaget describes these two" awarenesses" as two facets of the same series of events. The elaboration of sensorimotor intelligence and conceptual thought proceed as functions of the interaction between the organism and its environment. Piaget analyzes the evolution of the four conceptual categories, object concept, space, causality and time, within a common framework of six stages corresponding to those of intellectual development in general. The first two stages occupy the first two to three months of life and are not clearly separated. They cover the reflexes and earliest habits of the infant. The third stage, which extends roughly through the next four to six months, reveals the beginning of ideas of permanence, accommodation and grasping as the infant intercoordinates sound and visual images. During the fourth stage, which covers the remainder of the first year, the child reaches the level of searching for objects that have disappeared from view. During the next half year, in the fifth stage, objects are inserted into sequential