Everyone has experienced childhood and adolescence, and if you can look back on that time with a psychological eye, you may have a deeper understanding of yourself.
Parents with children at home will probably feel something, and the psychology of children is the most difficult to guess. It is possible that one second it is still obedient like a little angel, and the next second it suddenly transforms into a "bear child".
How do we understand what these angelic and demonic hybrids are thinking? Learn a little about developmental psychology!
Child Psychology
Developmental psychology, formerly known as child psychology. But now developmental psychology research encompasses the entire human process from birth to death.
During the Renaissance, philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau were already wondering what was different between children and adults except for their bodies. How should adults treat children?
In 1762, Rousseau wrote the world's first book to interpret the psychology of children and tell about children's education, Emile. The protagonist is a boy named Emile, from his birth, divided into five stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth and adulthood in order of age, and the concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity are explained throughout the educational process. The study of child psychology in the book is still based on perceptual understanding, and does not use scientific observation and experimental methods.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
After Rousseau, many scholars joined the research process. Among them was Darwin, the founder of evolution, who wrote a biography of a baby in 1876 based on his long-term observations and collection of information on a child.
The first true child psychologist in history was the German William Thierry Preyer, who, after making systematic observations of his son from birth to the age of 3, wrote Child Psychology in 1882, the first recognized scientific, systematic monograph on child psychology in history. Child psychology was born.
The Psychology of Children consists of three parts: the development of the child's perception, the development of the child's will (or action), and the development of the child's intellect (or speech). In the book, Pryer not only recorded his daily observations of his son's psychological state, but also recorded many more scientific psychological experiments, which are also the earliest psychological experiments in history on children.
The birth of child psychology was only 3 years later than The founding of scientific psychology by Wundt, and it is difficult to draw theoretical results from general psychology, when even the earliest constructivist psychology and functionalist psychology were not yet formed, which made child psychology have a bit of a savage growth taste.
adolescence
Immediately after Pryor, the most important researcher in the early years of child psychology was the American psychologist Granville Stanley Hall. He studied theology in Europe at a young age, and it was not until he read Wundt's Physiological Psychology in 1874 at the age of 30 that he suddenly realized that his true love was the psychology that had emerged at that time.
Stanley Hall
So he came to Harvard University to study with William James, the founder of functionalist psychology, and got the first doctorate in American psychology—even his teacher had a doctorate in philosophy. He once again crossed the ocean to the University of Leipzig in Germany to join The Unter, becoming the first person to cross the two major schools of functional psychology and constructivist psychology.
After studying with Wundt for two years, Hall discovered that constructivist psychology was not his own dish, and that the functionalist psychology he had studied before was not much interest. He is most concerned about the psychological development process of children and adolescents. For Wundt, however, any psychology that deviates from the study of the psychological elements of adults is "rebellious," so Hall has to return to the United States again.
After returning to China, he first served as a professor at Johns Hopkins University and trained a large number of psychological talents, including John Dewey, one of the representative figures of functionalist psychology. He was then invited to serve as president of Clark University. In 1892, Hall reached the pinnacle of his life, and the American Psychological Association, which he presided over, was officially established, and he was elected as the first president.
Hall's view of developmental psychology comes from Darwin's theory of evolution, which holds that the growth process of human beings from birth to adulthood actually reflects our development and evolutionary process. Hall calls his own view of developmental psychology "re-evolution," meaning that the history of each of us growing up is actually inadvertently imitating the evolutionary history of human beings.
In his 1904 book Adolescence, Hall drew the psychological development of 13-23 years of age into the field of developmental psychology research, naming it "adolescence".
According to Hall's re-enactment view, children at this age are in a period of psychological upheaval like a "storm". He believes that adolescence is a restless stage accompanied by strong psychological conflicts and emotional fluctuations, and like summer weather, there may be psychological changes at any time of the wind and rain. Hall also believes that teenagers are particularly prone to oscillating between pleasure and pain. "Living happily is considered an inalienable right; adolescents live for pleasure, whether hedonistic or aesthetic," he said. ”
We will find that teenagers are particularly prone to feeling happy, and a good novel, a wonderful movie, a good ball game or a romantic date will make them happy as if they are flying to the sky. However, the depression and pain of teenagers also come just as quickly, and a few criticisms from teachers and parents or a contemptuous look from passers-by may make them feel that life is bleak.
Hall's discussion of the psychological problems of adolescence can be described as advanced, and it is still guiding the work of adolescent education to this day, which is one of the biggest reasons why Hall is remembered by the world. In his later years, he became interested in the psychological problems of the elderly, so he wrote "Aging", which specialized in this problem, and expanded the scope of developmental psychology to all ages.
Eight stages of child psychology say
Another great master of psychology of the same era also made a significant contribution to the progress of developmental psychology, Freud, the founder of the psychoanalytic school, who had a "five-stage theory" for the changes in the psychological development of children. His theory was later inherited by Erik H. Erikson and developed into a more scientific and normative eight-stage theory of child psychology.
Eric Erikson
Erikson's teacher was Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Erikson belonged to the psychoanalytic school, but from his theory, he was significantly more influenced by the new psychoanalytic school.
In 1950, Eriksen published the book "Children and Society", which changed Freud's theory of psychological development with "sexual drive" as the main internal factor, arguing that although these eight stages of psychological development are determined by heredity (internal causes), whether or not to pass these stages is determined by the social environment (external factors).
The Eight Stages of Child Psychology say:
Stage 1: Pre-infancy (0 to 2 years) The main developmental tasks of this stage are: gaining a sense of trust and overcoming suspicion. Simply put, babies learn to trust their parents or guardians and believe that they are in a safe environment.
Stage 2: Late Infancy (2 to 4 years) The main developmental tasks of this stage are to gain a sense of initiative and overcome shame. Simply put, at this stage, you must learn to control your body and do what you want to do.
Stage 3: Early Childhood (3 to 6 years old) The main developmental tasks of this stage are: to gain a sense of initiative and overcome feelings of guilt. Simply put, this new stage is about learning to be proactive in exploring and discovering the world.
Stage IV: Childhood (6 to 11 years old) The main developmental tasks of this stage are: to gain a sense of hard work and overcome the feeling of inferiority. Simply put, this stage is to study well in school and not to be greedy.
Stage 5: Adolescence (12 to 18 years old) The main development task of this stage is to form role identity and prevent role confusion. Simply put, this is when the child needs to figure out the question of "who am I?".
Stage 6: Early adulthood (18 to 25 years old) The main developmental tasks of this stage are: to gain a sense of intimacy and avoid loneliness. Simply put, this is a stage of meeting friends and lovers, and it is possible to enter the palace of marriage.
Stage 7: Mid-adulthood (25 to 50 years old) The main development task of this stage is to gain a sense of reproduction and avoid a sense of stagnation. To put it simply, the meaning of human life is no longer limited to oneself, but to consider family, work and society.
Stage VIII: Late Adulthood (after the age of 50) The main developmental tasks of this stage are: to achieve a sense of perfection and avoid feelings of disappointment or disgust. Simply put, this is the stage at which a person finally sums up his life.
Everyone is in a different social and cultural environment, the economic conditions are different, and the care and care given by parents or guardians is also very different, so not everyone is strictly in the same psychological state at the same age. Some people in the early childhood period (the third stage) because the parents are too doting, even do not let themselves eat, it is possible that until the age of 6 to 7 years old has not been able to "get the sense of initiative", can not enter the childhood period (the fourth stage), that is, the so-called "late maturation".
Source pexls
However, it must be pointed out that whether it is the five-stage theory or the eight-stage theory, like many theories of the psychoanalytic school, it is only based on the clinical observation and treatment of some cases, as well as their own summary and speculation, and have not been rigorously verified by experiments.
"Epistemology of Occurrence"
Truly based on scientific experiments and universally recognized theories of developmental psychology, the "epistemology of occurrence" was founded by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1930s. He is also considered one of the greatest child psychologists to date.
Jean Piaget
In 1896, Pia was born into a family of intellectuals, the son of a university professor and the mother of a devout Catholic. His wealthy family and enlightened parents provided him with access to philosophy and the natural sciences from an early age.
In Piaget's biography, he recorded an interesting childhood incident: one day, he picked up a small sparrow with pure white feathers on the ground. After careful observation, he judged that the sparrow was suffering from albinism, and then he wrote a "research" article and sent it to a natural science magazine called Fir Tree. The article was actually published, and he also entered the vision of the director of the Neuschal Museum. Piaget Jr. received an invitation from the curator to help collect specimens of mollusks. For the curator, this may just be a show of hands to promote backwards, but he did not expect Piaget to step into the door of science with such a foot.
In the following two years, many Natural Science journals in Europe received a number of research articles on molluscs, which caused a surprise in the European biological community. These articles were written by a teenager. Piaget received his bachelor's degree at the age of 19. At the age of 22, he received a double doctorate in biology and philosophy with a thesis on molluscs.
After that, Piaget turned his interest to psychology, and after several years of hard reading, the psychological knowledge of both psychoanalytic, behaviorist, or Gestalt schools was not rejected.
Like many of his fellow members in developmental psychology, Piaget has conducted numerous observations, interrogations, psychological tests, and scientific experiments on his two daughters and a son.
Piaget has designed many child psychological experiments that are both fun and do not leave psychological shadows, some of which have long been classics. On the basis of a large number of clinical observations and experiments, Piaget put forward his own views on developmental psychology. He believes that the development process of human psychology is affected by both internal factors (such as heredity) and external factors (external environment, social and cultural atmosphere, etc.), and the two are intertwined and twisted into a rope, and interdependence is indispensable. And with the growth of people and changes in the environment, human psychological functions will always change.
Piaget divided the psychological development of children into four stages, but unlike Freud and Erikson, his division was based on the cognitive structure of children, and because of his natural science background, he had a very deep "sense of science".
The first stage is called the sensory operation stage (sensory motor stage, 0 to 2 years old), when the baby will only perceive the world through physical movement, so you will see the baby filling the mouth with what people and they can get, he is not to satisfy the "lip sexual desire", but through the skin to perceive.
The second stage is called the preoperational stage (preoperational stage, 2 to 7 years old), when young children begin to learn to replace their perceived world with some "symbols" - such as "mother" to represent the person who often feeds himself, dresses himself, and helps himself with small school bags. It is also during this period that children really master the art of speaking and know what they say. However, as Piaget's water cup experiment revealed, they did not yet have the concepts of "computation" and "equality" in their thinking. I still think the whole world revolves around me. This stage is almost equivalent to preschool.
The third stage is called the concrete operation stage (concrete operations stage, 7 to 11 years old), during this period children understand that no matter what shape of cup of water is poured into the cup or the "conservation" of the cup of water, know that the world is very big itself is just a grain of dust, will be the primary school application problem listed into the equation to calculate. However, at this time, they still have to rely on specific things such as an apple and two bananas to replace the numbers, and they will not replace the letters x and y.
The fourth stage is called the formal operation stage (formal operation stage, from the age of 11 years old has been developed) from about the 5th to 6th grade of primary school, children began to learn logical thinking, learn to use unknown number series equations, thinking form has actually been almost the same as adults, and the development after that is no longer leap-forward, but linear development little by little.
The reproduced content represents the views of the author only
Does not represent the position of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Source: Origin Reading
Edit: Herding fish