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Psychology 28 I
Gestalt psychologists in the current sense of representable relations, though they
also distinguish various degrees of ‘pregnance’.
15. Studies carried out in Geneva explain primary perceptive effects (i.e. the field
effects of the Gestalt psychologists) by means of aprobabilistpattern of ‘encounters’
between the parts of the object perceived and those of the recording organs, and of
pairings or correspondences between the ‘encounters’ affecting the distinct objects
to be compared. In this way, it is possible to account for the various optico-geo-
metric illusions and especially the law of the maximum that they attain during brief
exposure. As to the gradual development of perception, in addition to these primary
effects we must recognize the existence of various kinds of perceptive activities that
modify the pairings through exploration, comparison from a distance, sightings
(for orientation), and so on, and which are governed in varying degrees by the
intelligence itself.
16. Various studies have already been carried out to check the general validity of some
of the stages described concerning number formation, retention concepts, seria-
tion, and so on. Churchill, for instance, found in Aden the essential stages of num-
ber construction. Goodenough compared Chinese and European children in
Shanghai and found at the same ages and in the same sequence the stages charac-
terizing retention concepts, and so on. Mohseni has studied the same problems in
Iran and found the same stages, with a certain lag among illiterate mountain
people and at the same ages in Teheran. M. Bovet made comparisons in Algeria.
The Canadian psychologists, Pinard, Laurendeau et Boisclair ascertained the same
sequences among schoolchildren in Martinique but with a startling lag of three to
four years, though their curriculum was exactly the same as the French one.
Peluffo noted a similar lag in Genoa among illiterate children from the south of
Italy and demonstrated the children’s recovery curves in their new environment,
and so on.
In cases such as these, comparative research therefore leads us to the conclusion
that there are constant characteristics (qualitative characteristics and a stage se-
quence) which may develop more quickly or more slowly according to the environ-
ment, though there is no reversal of the sequence. It is therefore likely that these
are ‘general ’characteristics, both in the sense of a psycho-organic make-up common
to all normal individuals and of an equally ‘general’ socialization that is not pecu-
liar to any given society. However, this interpretation, which would bear out the
existence of a ‘mental’ stage halfway between the organic stage and the social (in
the sense of a differential specificity varying according to the society involved), is
not accepted by everyone, for a number of Soviet psychologists still support the
more simple dualism of organic factors and sociological factors. Though they
attribute an important rBle to the actions of the subject in acquiring knowledge,
they still consider (like, for example, Kostyuk in Kiev) that intellectual develop-
ment is basically dependent on the transmission of adult knowledge through the
family and the school. It is for the future to decide which of these two views is
the correct one.
17. See also Chapter VII, section 12.
I 8. A point to be noted, moreover, is that despite theoretical recognition of the ‘auton-
omy of the ego’ a great many psychoanalysts still have a tendency to remain
reductionists, either because they are inclined to explain various forms of backward-
ness or disturbance involving an obvious cognitive element (even sometimes to the
point of mental deficiency) by means of affective conflicts, or by exaggerating, as
a great American psychiatrist has recently done, the effect an infant’s education
may have on neuroses, psychoses, marital trouble, crimes and offences and even
on wars!
19. P. Wolff, ‘The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget and Psychoanalysis’, Psy-
chological Issues, 1960.
20. Recent investigations seem to have made some headway in answering this. Children
of different levels of intelligence (determined by a hierarchy of operative structures)