Imagination in Early Childhood
- Author:
Ruth Griffiths, M.A., Ph.D., with a Preface by
Professor Flugel. 358 pp. Kegan Paul. 12/6.
This book is an interesting record of an original and valuable piece of research. The work upon which it is based was done partly in Brisbane and partly in a school of the London County Council when Miss Griffiths was Re- search Assistant to the Burden Mental Research Trust, and one of the particularly interesting features of the book is the comparison between the two sets of statistics.
At the outset, Miss Griffiths set herself the task of investigating the imaginative content of the minds of elementary infant school children, and devised a new means of technique for this purpose. She selected thirty London, and twenty Brisbane children; of the London children fifteen were boys and fifteen girls, with chrono- logical ages of between 5 and 6 years. These children were divided into three groups: 5 of each, boys and girls, being chosen as having an intelligence quotient of more than 115; those of the next group falling between 90 and 105, while those of the remaining ten children were in every case below 80. Of the Brisbane child- ren, also in age between 5 and 51- years, the highest intelligence quotient was 129 and the lowest 79.
Each of the children was interviewed separ- ately, on successive school days, for a period of 20 days or until 20 interviews had been com- pleted, and each interview lasted from about 20 to 40 minutes. At these interviews a selected series of tasks was presented to the child. Every- thing he said was taken down, and the work done was itself preserved and selections of it are reproduced wherever possible.
The tasks suggested to the children were the telling of a story, the making of drawings, the description of images that came up in the mind after the eyes were covered with a hand, the recital of dreams, and an investigation of ^ interpretations of 20 ink blots made by the vestigator, only four of these being shown ata interview. Each child was left free to draw <> talk as he wished, and the order in which $ tasks were done was left to the individual choi^ of the child. Part I of the book is the reco? of the actual work produced.
Part II is concerned with a theoretical dj5’ cussion of the conclusions suggested by ^ nature of the material given in Part I, and cof1’ tains Chapters on Phantasy and Emotional Lne’ Some Aspects of Childish Thinking, The Fuflf tion of Phantasy, The Symbolic Process 111 Children’s Thinking, Phantasy and Education Play and Children’s Dreams; chapters are alf included on Children’s Drawings, Imagery Children, and the Ink-Blot Reactions.
The first conclusion of very considerable W terest to which Miss Griffiths comes, is that therf is a coherency and even something of a consi?’ tency underlying the group of material present^ by any one child. This coherence is not form3’ but emotional. She admits that, regarded fro^ a logical point of view, there is a great deal oj confusion in these products, but points out tha* “For the child, who so far has no experience of the ordered logical classification in adult pe? ception, there can be no sense of confusion-^ What then is the underlying unity in the child 5 material? Miss Griffiths finds the answer to th*5 to lie in the relation between a child’s emotio*1 and his phantasy. Quite rightly Miss Griffith5 regards phantasy as the expression of a child’5 emotional problems and it is a delight to read the clarity with which this point of view is set out.
Miss Griffiths notes how varied are a child’5 emotional problems, and how urgently they press upon him for solution, and points out that for a child, attack upon the solution of his prob- lems can only be made piece by piece and in a phantasy fashion, each solution of each part of the problem being tried out in a piecemeal fashion before the whole can be comprehended- This is a notable advance upon views current among: educationalists of the nature and mean- ing of phantasy in childhood.
The second and very valuable observation made by Miss Griffiths is the relation of day- dreaming or phantasy to work. She notes the relationship between absorption in phantasy and inhibition in work. It is significant that this conclusion emerges, not from the evidence of Psychotherapeutic work with emotionaUy dis- r r children, but from the results of technical ‘^arch with normal children, as it draws atten- 11 to and provides material for further in- , shgation of one of the most important prob- s of mental health and education?that of e relation of the emotional to the intellectual fector ‘M wred picture of the actual intellectual cap felt m Youn? children. It has for long been blu ^nte^ectua^ tests alone give but a ?f many children, and if we are to arrive a true picture of the intellectual capacities of ofdny of the duller and more inhibited members r child population, it is to work like Miss jjnths’ that we must look in the future.
-U a criticism has to be made of this book, it **1 be of Miss Griffiths’ account of the cap- . ..y for concentration in a child. It is inter- to set in contrast to this Dr Charlotte ^uhler’s record in her Study of the Child’s First ear of Life, ” The perseverance of the one- ^ ar-old who spends an uninterrupted two ?urs and twenty-three minutes in experiment- 8 is especially remarkable.” This does not Pport the view of lack of power of concen- 011 in the child. The solution of the prob- J?1 presented by this contrast is indicated by h!SS Griffiths herself, though not perceived by ^r- Mental work to which the child cannot fix s attention is work prescribed for him by the 0r na-l world, work which fulfills no conscious r I ^conscious need of the child himself. In ation to such tasks the power of concentra- ^0ri of both child and average adult is through- t life consistently small. Tasks the child him- sh ^ev*ses’ as whole of Miss Griffiths’ book ovvs, can claim his whole-hearted attention c 9nty f?r longish periods at a time, but for ^sistently recurring periods throughout a ^cession of days.
? ^ a short review it is not possible to do , stice to the many-sided interest of this book, t as will easily be seen from the above selec- it is a book whose perusal will benefit ery thoughtful worker among children, and ^lch makes a definite and new contribution to r understanding of small children. M.F.L.
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