Child psychology

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The child psychology is a part of developmental psychology . While developmental psychology researches changes over the entire life span (so-called life-span-developmental psychology ), the subjects of child psychology are age-related changes in human experience and behavior beginning with the early stages in the life cycle ( prenatal development , early, middle and late Childhood ) through to puberty or adolescence . These age-related changes are as a result of (genetic factors, aging, shortening also (1) endogenous conditions plant called factors), (2) exogenous influences ( learning , socialization processes , critical life events , sometimes even under environmental factors summarized) and (3) internal psychological factors (conscious self-control, e.g. in relation to life plans, self-realization , and unconsciously dynamic processes).

In Germany, only the subject of developmental psychology is mentioned in the diploma and bachelor's / master's degree regulations for psychology; There is no university degree in child psychology, nor is there an academic degree in child psychology. However, psychologists can deal specifically with children in research or work with children in various contexts; the latter as child and adolescent psychotherapists , treating psychologically or psychosomatically ill children psychotherapeutically .

precursor

The forerunners of child psychology can be classified in the second half of the 18th century, when education developed from philosophy and theology into an independent science. The French cultural scholars Élisabeth Badinter and Philippe Ariès even speak of the “discovery of childhood ” in the 16th to 18th centuries; Children were previously viewed as adults from the age of 7, and there was little interest in younger children, as a close bond with a child would have been an emotional bad investment because of the high infant and child mortality rates . In the transition to the 19th century, the progress of pediatrics made the survival of children more reliable, and the mercantilist- oriented state also had an increased interest in subjects. This was accompanied by the demand that the parents - at that time the mothers - should be given special responsibility for their children in terms of care. At the end of the 19th century, the influence of psychoanalysis added the mother's responsibility for the mental health of her child.

History of Child Psychology

Early empirical child psychology studies

Charles Darwin , William Thierry Preyer and after them William Stern and Clara Stern systematically observed their children and recorded their observations in the form of diary entries. Preyer's monograph "The Soul of the Child - Observations on the Mental Development of Man in the First Years of Life" from 1882 marks the beginning of child psychology as an independent research area. William Stern published his standard work Psychology of Childhood in 1914 . In 1904 Karl Groos published his work on the soul life of the child .

In Vienna in the 1920s, an academic developmental psychology developed with Charlotte Bühler in direct competition with early child psychoanalysis ( Hermine Hug-Hellmuth and Anna Freud). Although Karl and Charlotte Bühler rejected (child) psychoanalysis, there were also connections. So worked René Spitz along with Charlotte Bühler and Anna Freud.

The gestalt theoretical consideration of development was introduced in 1921 with Kurt Koffka's book “The Basics of Psychological Development”, in which he set up a developmental psychology of the child ( also published in English in 1924 under the title The Growth of the Mind. An Introduction to Child Psychology ). In 1923 Kurt Lewin began his developmental psychological research with the help of film recordings of children in natural life and conflict situations.

The attachment theory established by John Bowlby in the 1940s had had a major impact on child psychology and psychiatry. Attachment theory grew out of the skepticism of its proponents about the viewpoints advocated by John B. Watson in the late 1920s; Watson had warned against allowing mothers to pamper and pamper their children, thereby exerting an impact on infant education that was not broken until 1946 by Benjamin Spock's book Infant and Child Care . Bowlby emphasized the importance of early childhood experiences and attachment to a caregiver as the basis of later functionality in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. He emphasized the importance of the parent-child relationship for the development of secure bonds and drew attention to the active role children play in shaping the course of their own development. In 1951 he published the study commissioned by the WHO on the relationship between maternal care and mental health. It made a contribution to the UN program for the benefit of homeless children. In 1967 the field study by Mary Ainsworth , a colleague of Bowlby, was published on mother-child interaction among the African Ganda tribe in Uganda . Ainsworth's main interest was the question of how the child's bond with the mother develops. In 1969 John Bowlby founded the attachment theory with his book "Attachment - An Analysis of the Mother-Child Relationship" . This means a shift in research focus from the hindering to the promoting factors in the mother-child relationship.

The founder of the “Czech Child Psychology School”, Zdeněk Matějček , drew attention to the negative effects of collective education in 1962 with his book “ Psychological Deprivation in Childhood” , which he had researched with long-term studies over 40 years. In 1963 he made the award-winning film "Children without Love" in Venice, which took up the problem of raising children outside the home and showed the effects of a lack of attachment on the development of children.

Psychodynamic contributions

By Sigmund Freud was the onset of the birth of sexual development and the possibilities of mistakes made ( Oedipus complex ). The Freudian structural model of the psyche also contains developmental psychological aspects, since these structures develop depending on parental influences. Freud's daughter Anna was a pioneer in the field of psychoanalytic treatment of children.

Object relationship theory was developed in the 1930s and 1940s, focusing on the interactions of the individual with real and imaginary people and the relationships that people experience between their external and internal objects.

The importance of a reliable social relationship with a caregiver has been the subject of much research. This topic has a long history that begins with the alleged children's experiments of the Staufer King Friedrich II , which the chronicler Salimbene of Parma reports. From a pediatrician perspective, after the turn of the 20th century (1901), Meinhard von Pfaundler pointed out that damage to the hospital can be associated with a mother separated (hence the name hospitalism , sometimes also called hospital marasmus). In 1935, René A. Spitz also demonstrated the connection between disorders in the early mother-child relationship and serious illnesses in infants.

Another direction in depth psychology dealt with social influences on behavior and the importance of interpersonal relationships. It began with Alfred Adler's individual psychology and continued in neo- psychoanalysis. Instead of internal drives, social and cultural influences were viewed as determinants of behavior. In 1930, Alfred Adler's textbook on “ child rearing ” appeared, in which he applied individual psychological concepts to child development and to education in school and at home. As early as 1904, Adler had published the influential essay The Doctor as Educator .

Topics of a current child psychology

Today there is a myriad of studies and findings on key areas of children's development. From a systematic point of view, the following areas can be distinguished: (1) physical development, (2) development of sensory and motor skills , (3) cognitive development (e.g. Jean Piaget ), (4) emotional development, (5) language development , ( 6) self-concept , (7) gender role , (8) moral development (e.g. Lawrence Kohlberg ), (9) social development (e.g. attachment theory ).

Application of child psychological knowledge

The results of child psychology are incorporated into the information provided to parents (e.g. in the form of letters from parents ) or, in the case of problems, into the advice of parents as well as into the training and advice of educators and teachers. Insights into child psychology are also used to optimally design a conducive and stimulating environment in everyday life, in the clinical area (e.g. rooming-in ), in home education (avoidance of hospitalism ) or in schools (child-friendly didactics ). Likewise, any statement is made (eg. As a result of children psychological findings on issues and problems in the educational everyday language development , infant crying , bedwetting , childhood aggression , children's fears , gender roles and gender identity ). There is a smooth transition to clinical child psychology , in which the development of mental disorders in childhood is researched.

literature

Classical works (in chronological order)

  • Gustav Siegert: Problematic Child Nature . Voigtländer, Kreuznach and Leipzig 1889 ( digitized ).
  • Preyer, William Th. (1989): The soul of the child (reprint of the first edition from 1882; introduced and provided with materials on the history of reception by Georg Eckardt). Berlin (GDR): Publishing house of the sciences.
  • Kurt Koffka : The Basics of Psychological Development . Osterwieck am Harz: Zickfeld 1921. Reprint 1966 Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. English version 1924: The Growth of the Mind. An Introduction to Child Psychology , reprinted 1999 Psychology Press, ISBN 9780415209939 .
  • Alfred Adler : Raising children . (EA 1930) Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-26311-5 .
  • Walter Toman : Family Constellations . Your influence on people . (First edition 1961) Beck Verlag, Munich, 7th edition 2002, ISBN 3-406-32111-9 .
  • René A. Spitz : The first year of life; a psychoanalytic study of normal and deviant development of object relations , New York: International Universities Press, 1965, dt. From infant to toddler: Natural history d. Mother-child relationships in the first year of life , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1967 - last new edition: Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005 ISBN 3-6089-1823-X .
  • Mary D. Salter Ainsworth : Infancy in Uganda . The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1967.
  • Albert Bandura : Learning on the model . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-12-920590-X .
  • John Bowlby : Separation - Psychological harm as a result of the separation of mother and child . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1986, ISBN 3-596-42171-3 .

Newer works

  • Arnold Lohaus & Marc Vierhaus: Developmental Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence for Bachelor (3rd, revised edition). Springer, Berlin, 2015. ISBN 3662455285 .
  • Wolfgang Schneider (Editor), Ulman Lindenberger (Editor): Developmental Psychology: Formerly Oerter & Montada. Bound with online materials (7th, completely revised edition). Beltz, Weinheim 2012. ISBN 3621277684 .
  • Philippe Ariès : Childhood Story. (Original title: L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime. Plon, Paris 1960, translated by Caroline Neubaur and Karin Kersten), Hanser, Munich 1975 (as paperback: 17th paperback edition, German non-fiction book; Culture & History 30138, Munich 2011 (first edition 1978), ISBN 978-3-423-30138-1 ).
  • Lloyd deMause (1989). Childhood evolution. In: Lloyd deMause (ed.). Do you hear the children crying: a psychogenetic story of childhood. (6th ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Pp. 12-111, Original: 1974).
  • Alfred Doren (editor): The Chronicle of the Salimbene of Parma (= The historians of the German prehistoric times. Complete edition 2, Vol. 93-94). After the edition of the Monumenta Germaniae 2 volumes. Dyk, Leipzig 1914.
  • Franz Petermann (Ed.): Textbook of Clinical Child Psychology (7th, revised edition). Hogrefe, Göttingen. ISBN 3801724476 .
  • Lotte Schenk-Danzinger (1980). Developmental Psychology (14th edition). Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1980. ISBN 3707406024 .
  • Trautner, HM (1978). Developmental Psychology Textbook. Volume 1 and 2. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1978. ISBN 3801704696 .
  • William Damon (Ed.): Handbook of Child Psychology . Wiley & Sons, 6th edition 2006.
  • Caroline Hopf: The soul of the child - Preyer and the beginnings of child psychology . In: The experimental pedagogy: empirical educational science in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2004, ISBN 978-3-7815-1331-0 .
  • Georg Eckardt: Beginnings and early stages of a scientific child psychology . In: Core problems in the history of psychology, Springer VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-92423-6 .

Magazines

  • Practice of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry , ISSN  0032-7034 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Child psychology  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Schenk-Danzinger, 1980, p. 26
  2. ^ Stefan Schmidtchen: Child Psychology - Lexicon of Psychology. In: Spektrum.de . 2000, accessed September 10, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Georg Eckardt (Ed.): Developmental and educational psychology - central writings and personalities, beginners and early stages of a scientific child psychology . Springer, 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-16882-1 , p. 197.
  4. ^ Siegfried Hoppe-Graff, Hye-On Kim: From William T. Preyer to William Stern: About the implementation and use of diary studies in the childhood days of German developmental psychology. (pdf, 224 kB) In: Journal für Psychologie, vol. 15 (2007), issue 2. September 8, 2007, p. 15 , accessed on September 10, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Caroline Hopf: The experimental pedagogy: empirical educational science in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, The soul of the child - Pryer and the beginnings of child psychology, p. 65, Klinkhardt, 2004, ISBN 3-7815-1331-9
  6. ↑ Georg Eckardt (Ed.): Development and Pedagogical Psychology - Central Writings and Personalities, The opening work of modern child psychology (W.Th. Preyer), p. 37, Springer, 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-16882-1
  7. ↑ Karl Groos: About the soul life of the child . 5th edition. Ruther & Reichard, Berlin 1921 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  8. ↑ See Helmut E. Lück , The Filmmaker Kurt Lewin . Gruppendynamik Vol. 16, 1985, No. 2, pp. 131-141. Lewin's publications are also mentioned there.
  9. ^ Jennie Rothenberg Gritz: What Everyone's Missing in the Attachment-Parenting Debate. In: The Atlantic. May 31, 2012, accessed September 10, 2018 .
  10. ↑ von Pfaundler, 1924
  11. ^ Alfred Adler: The doctor as an educator (1904). In: Healing and Education: A Book of Waldorf Education for Doctors and Educators. 1914, accessed December 8, 2015 .
  12. ↑ e.g. Anton Lohaus & Marc Vierhaus, 2015; similarly also Stefan Schmidtchen: child psychology. In Lexicon of Psychology. Spectrum of science publishing company