Biographies of Child Development. The Mental Growth Career of Eighty-Four Infants and Children

sented in an easy and forceful manner and it is a real contribution as a text in urology. One has become accustomed to expect essential and fundamental contributions to continue issuing from the Yale Clinic of Child Development. This new book fully justifies, if it does not surpass, such expectations. Clearly, the authors, with the initiative, collaboration, and perspective of Gesell, have arrived at a point when they feel ready to take stock, sift the accumulated materials and see what can be learned from them. The results are presented with caution, self-criticism, and much wisdom, on the basis of well-selected and well-documented cases. Part One, written by Gesell, reports the follow-up examinations of 30 children whose development has been recorded by him in 1928 in his book, Infancy and Human Growth. Comparative studies of early and later development have thus been made possible and cover a period of 10 years. The author feels that the repeated investigations of these widely diversified specimens warrant the assumption of "a high degree of latent predictability in the early sector of the life cycle." He emphasizes the "need of constant vigilance and prudence," makes allowance for exceptions and unpredictable contingencies, and finds that generally "the rate and the completeness of attained growth are prognostics of as-yet-unrealized growth." Part Two, with authorship divided between all four collaborators, presents individual studies of behavior growth, concerned with samples of superior mental endowment, language problems, reading disabilities, irregularities in early mental development, immaturity and prematurity, twinship, physical complications, foster care, and child adoption. The essence of the findings is summed up in a final chapter, of which the following quotations are characteristic: "Growth is a highly distinctive phenomenon bound up with personality itself. .. Every mental growth career has its own individuality. .. So utterly unforeseen are the vicissitudes of life that our common sense will deter us from attempting to forecast too precisely the developmental career even of a mediocre child." Most appealing to this reviewer is the humane plea in the last paragraph for "more tolerance, more kindness, and much more humor" at home and at school in the difficult but fascinating problem of understanding individuality. The book creates an appetite for more of the same, especially with regard to follow-up studies of the less exceptional, everyday child. It is unique in its concreteness, respect for facts, and clearness of presentation. Every statement made is judicious, …