Introduction to Psychology/Child and Adolescent Psychology/Introduction

Introduction

This work is addressed to all students who aim to practice in the fields - both vast and closed - of social psychology, psychological education, pedagogy, or other psychologies; that is to say, in any domain where the "rules of psychology" hold sway. Hence, this work will also interest a neophyte with any interest in psychology.

De nombreux métiers, surtout récents, cherchent à se distinguer par un hermétisme de leur code linguistique, et c'est largement le cas dans le champ professionnel désigné ci-dessus. Le langage «psy» est l'apanage des professionnels « initiés» et les démarque des autres interlocuteurs pourtant de plus en plus nombreux dans ce domaine. Si l'on souhaite que « le fait psychologique » soit considéré comme un outil, et comme l'outil le plus efficace dont nous disposions dans notre domaine professionnel, il faut lui ôter son côté hermétique et expliquer clairement ce que nous savons avec certitude, ce que nous savons par intuition et ce que nous devons soumettre à des études plus approfondies pour intégrer tel ou tel fait dans le corpus des connaissances établies.

The goal of this work is twofold: on the one hand, to describe as clearly as possible the present state of our knowledge in the field of child and adolescent psychology, and on the other, to allow future teachers, educators of young children, psychiatric teaching assistants[?aides médico-pédagogiques], etc., to further[?faire le point sur] their knowledge.

This book comprises three parts:

The first part, dedicated to the introduction, details the history of child psychology (and situates it with respect to several related and descendant fields);

The second part presents the content matter of the subject, in the form of questions that announce the discussion of an important point or that permit the recapitulation of a subchapter. The key terms and the important names in psychoanalysis and psychology are written in the margin in order to help the reader in his studies;

The third part comprises:

a bibliography of reference works;
the assembled questions, by chapter;
the biographies of several authors;
a lexicon;
[?des annales (avec des propositions de corrigés).]

With this book, the reader can always find:

the exact point he wants to study;
the theory of a particular psychologist;
the answer to a question he has;
practice for his exam.

If this book manages to accomplish these goals and, moreover, to transmit even a little of [?un tant soit peu] the pleasure of understanding, for example, what goes on when a child plays in front of our eyes or seeks to grasp a kind of reasoning up to that time unknown, if the reader (in addition to everything mentioned above) could sense the complexity - under the apparent simplicity - of these "human adventures," the goal of this work would be achieved.