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Psychology and parenthood

Chapter 12: FOOTNOTES:
By H. Addington Bruce
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Parenthood & Family RelationsPsychiatry/Psychology

About This Book

This handbook translates early twentieth-century psychological research into practical guidance for parents, emphasizing how home environment and early training shape mental and moral development. It argues that surroundings often outweigh heredity, explores the use of suggestion in education, analyzes the origins and cultivation of exceptional ability, and surveys focused approaches to child culture. Later chapters address common problems such as laziness, the role of laughter, manifestations of childhood hysteria, and the harmful effects of fear, and the conclusion offers concrete recommendations. The overall aim is to help caregivers apply scientific insights to prevent damage and promote stronger intellectual and moral growth in children.

FOOTNOTES:

1 The passages quoted by me from Witte’s book have been made partly from Professor Wiener’s translation, and partly from the original.

2 It is to the development of some vital interest—whether by parental training or the accident of a favourable environment—that is due the often observed absence of laziness in children that are handicapped by adenoids, eye trouble, etc. This does not mean that the parent should neglect to have such handicaps removed as soon as possible; no matter how “interested” a child may be, the correction of remediable physical defects is of importance to his welfare and progress.

3 Since these lines were written Doctor Boris Sidis, in his “Psychology of Laughter,” has criticised the Bergson theory in more detail but on somewhat different grounds. Doctor Sidis’s own theory, briefly, is that the laughable is not the “mechanical” but the “stupid.” Or, as he himself expresses it, “Allusion to human stupidity is at the root of all comic.”

4 The psychology of dreams and their practical significance will be dealt with in some detail in my forthcoming book on “Sleep and Sleeplessness.”