International Library of Psychology: The Child and His Family

196 Pages·1999·3.861 MB·English

by  Charlotte Buhler

The International Library of Psychology
THE CHILD AND HIS FAMILY
Pounded by C. K. Ogden
The International Library of Psychology
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
In 32 Volumes
I The Childs Discovery of Death Anthony
II The Psychology of the Infant Bernfeld
III The Psychology of Special Abilities and
Disabilities Bronner
IV The Child and His Family B uhler
V From Birth to Maturity B uhler
VI The Mental Development of the Child B abler
VII The Psychology of Children’s Drawings Eng
VIII Educational Psychology Fox
IX A Study of Imagination in Early Childhood Griffiths
X Understanding Children’s Play Hartley et al
XI Intellectual Growth in Young Children Isaacs
XII Conversations with Children Katz
XIII The Growth of the Mind Koffka
XIV The Child’s Unconscious Mind Lay
XV Infant Speech Leivis
XVI The Growth of Reason Lonmer
XVII The Growing Child and its Problems Miller
XVIII The Child’s Conception of Physical Causality Piaget
XIX The Child’s Conception of Geometry Piaget et al
XX The Construction of Reality in the Child Piaget
XXI The Early Growth of Logic in the Child Inhelder et al
XXII The Growth of Logical Thinking from
Childhood to Adolescence Inhelder et al
XXIII Judgement and Reasoning in the Child Piaget
XXIV The Moral Judgment of the Child Piaget
XXV Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood Piaget
XXVI The Psychology of Intelligence Piaget
XXVII Mental Health and Infant Development, V1 Soddy
XXVIII Mental Health and Infant Development, V2 Soddy
XXIX Modern Psychology and Education Sturt
XXX The Dynamics of Education Taba
XXXI Education Psychology Thorndike
XXXII The Principles of Teaching Thorndike
THE CHILD AND HIS FAMILY
CHARLOTTE BUHLER
|J Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1940 by Routledge
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
,
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
an informa business
© 1940 Charlotte Biihler, Translated by Henry Beaumont
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders
of the works reprinted in the International Library of Psychology.
This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would
welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies
we have been unable to trace.
These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases
the condition of these originals is not perfect. The publisher has gone to
great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point
out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be
apparent in reprints thereof.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-20984-7 (hbk)
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction i
Problems, Method and Scope of the Study of Family
Life Undertaken by the Vienna Psychological Insti­
tute i
Material and Procedure 6
PART I. PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS
i. General Aspects of Parent-Child Relations 27
Characteristics of Parent-Child Contacts 27
Contact Situations and Purposes 44
The Role of Individual Members of the Household 52
The Reactions of Parents and Children 54
The Means of Establishing Contacts 57
n. T he Individual Families 60
The Ambros Family 60
The Burian Family 71
The Cermak Family 82
The Dostal Family 91
The Erhardt Family 96
The Fabian Family 100
Summary and Conclusions 108
PART II. SIBLING RELATIONS
hi. General Aspects of Sibling Relations 115
Characteristic Tendencies 115
The Classification and Its Reliability 120
General Characteristics of Sibling Contacts 123
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I11 Contents
I11 T he Individual Sibling Pairs 130
Erna and Kathe 131
Gertrud and Steffi 143
Ilse and Berthold 148
Alfred and Susi 159
Ada and Rudi 163
Herta and Lizzi 167
I11 Summary of Sibling R elations 170
Appendix: T he Problem of O bedience, by Sophie
Gedeon 178
Index 183
PREFACE
The Child and His Family has as its general purpose the investi­
gation of the mutual relations between the child and his family,
and, more generally, the child’s life within the family circle.
The study is based on accurate records of events occurring in
individual homes during prolonged observation periods. Many
specially trained collaborators were needed to collect the data,
and many more to evaluate the results.,
The information on which our work is based was collected
between November, 1931, and August, 1933. Observations in
seventeen homes were made by the following collaborators:
Hildegard Adelberg, Edeltrud Baar, Anny Blitz, Dr. Lotte
Danzinger-Schenk, Dr. Liselotte Frankl, Dr. Irma Gindl, Dr.
Sophie Gedeon, Franz Xavier Hollensteiner, Gertrud Hortner,
Dr. Maria Maudry, Dr. Eleonore Plischke, Dr. Ellen Nora
Ryan, and Eduard Ulbrich.
The interpretations of the collected material were contributed
primarily by Dr. Sophie Gedeon, Dr. Lotte Danzinger-Schenk,
and myself. Dr. Gedeon, First Assistant in the Psychological
Institute of the University of Athens, worked with us for a year.
She first conceived the method of grouping and classifying our
data, and studied independently the parents’ spontaneous ap­
proaches to their children. In addition, she classified and tabu­
lated the children’s reactions. Dr. Danzinger, co-director of our
Parents Association Institute in London, investigated the chil­
dren’s spontaneous approaches. My sincerest thanks go first of
all to these two independent and tireless collaborators. Further
assistance in classification, tabulation, and statistical evalua­
tion wras rendered by Edeltrud Baar, Gertrud Falk, Elise
Hammer, Ilse Hellmann, Maria Hertz, Gertrud Hortner,
Rudolf Groger, Maria Nekula, and Maria Synck. *
Dr. Norbert Thumb, Assistant at the Psychotechnical Insti­
tute of Vienna, and Dr. Maria Maudry, now Professor of
Psychology at Fordham University, New York, assumed the
vii
viii Preface
responsibility for the statistical treatment of our tables. To
all these industrious helpers, I am truly grateful.
Finally, I am deeply appreciative of the permission granted
by the different families to visit and observe them, and of the
generous assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation, which made
possible the collection and evaluation of data on such a large
scale.
Vienna, Summery 1937. Charlotte Buhler
INTRODUCTION
I. Problems, M ethods and Scope of the Study
of Family Life Undertaken by the Vienna
Psychological Institute
T he title of this book, The Child and His Family, might arouse
the erroneous hope and expectation that vve are about to present
entirely new revelations concerning the relations between the
child and his family. This, be it said at the outset, is not the
case, nor was it the purpose of our investigations. Our study has
and claims a methodological significance only; it attempts to
apply exact methods to problems which have hitherto been ap­
proached only descriptively.
The child’s environment, its influence on him and on his char­
acter development, have in the past been described in anecdotal
terms. A more precise approach, based on a classification of de­
fined behavior units, has never been undertaken. The present
study is a first attempt in this direction and demonstrates a
method whereby the mutual relations between individuals may
be evaluated quantitatively. Even though at present our mate­
rial is still limited in scope and we may claim only a heuristic
value for our results, this preliminary study shows that it is pos­
sible to describe in quantitative terms the atmosphere and basic
social structure of family life. In several homes, the mutual re­
lations of parents and children and of siblings were studied on
the basis of exact records of all events occurring in those fami­
lies. This was done by tabulating defined units of contact in
their qualitative characteristics. Thus the principal result of our
study lies in demonstrating a new approach to these relations
and the possibility of studying them by exact methods, rather
than in investigating their contents.
We plan to continue our research along these lines in order to
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