James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934) Mental Development in the Child and the Race (1897)
Chapter 1: Infant and Race Psychology
2. Race Psychology: Phylogenesis
...The phrase 'Race Psychology' is commonly used in a narrow sense, having reference to the characteristic mental peculiarities of various peoples, tribes, stages of civilization, cults, etc. That is, the word 'race' is applied to the human race. The points of comparison, on the other hand, between human and animal consciousness, fall under so-called Comparative Psychology. I take the liberty, however, of extending the meaning of the former phrase to include the history of consciousness, very much as the phrase 'race experience' is used to include the full wealth of inheritance derived, as it is held to be, from ancestral life of whatever kind. The problem of 'race psychology' then becomes the problem of the phylogenetic development of consciousness, just as 'individual psychology' deals with its ontogenetic development, both being legitimate branches of genetic as opposed to analytic psychology.
3. Analogies of Development: Epochs of Development
...The analogy of this series, again, with that of the infant's growth, is, in the main, very clear: the child begins in its pre-natal and early post-natal experience with blank sensations and pleasure and pain with the motor adaptations to which they lead, passes into a stage of apprehension of objects with response to them by 'suggestion,' imitation, etc., gets to be more or less self-controlled, imaginative, and volitional, and ultimately becomes reflective, social, and ethical.
...It is evident that if the objective epoch precedes the subjective -- if the child gets objects and reacts upon them at first without reflection, and only later deliberates upon their meaning to himself, and then aims at his own pleasure or profit in his behaviour toward them -- it is evident that there will be a great difference between the way he looks at other persons at these two stages of his growth respectively. Before he understands himself, that is, during the objective epoch, he cannot understand others, except as they are also objects of a certain kind; but in learning to understand himself, he also comes to understand them, as like himself, that is, as themselves having objects to act toward and upon just as he does. Here are, therefore, four very distinct phases of the child's experience of persons not himself, all subsequent to his purely affective or pleasure-pain epoch; first, persons are simply objects, parts of the material going on to be presented, mainly sensations which stand out strong, etc.; second, persons are very peculiar objects, very interesting, very active, very arbitrary, very portentous of pleasure or pain. If we consider these objects as fully presented, i.e. as in due relationship to one another in space, projected out, and thought of as external, and call such objects again projects, then persons at this stage may be called personal projects. They have certain peculiarities afterwards found by the child to be the attributes of personality; third, his own actions issuing from himself, largely by imitation, as we shall see, in response to the requirements of this 'projective' environment, having his own organism as their centre and his own consciousness as their theatre, give him light on himself as subject; and, fourth, this light upon himself is reflected upon other persons to illuminate them as also subjects, and they to him then become ejects or social fellows.
I insist upon this series of distinctions here, even though it be necessary to refer the reader ahead in my text for further justification of them; since it is the fundamental disregard of them which has vitiated much of the earlier work in infant and social psychology. The familiar 'psychologist's fallacy,' a fallacy which is so easy a refuge for inadequate insight, and so ready a screen for faulty analysis, will be permanently exposed only by the adoption of terms which forbid appeal to it. If by 'project' of persons we understand the infant's consciousness of others before he is conscious of himself, by 'subject' his consciousness of himself, and by 'eject,' as Clifford suggested, his consciousness of other persons as similar to himself, we have, I think, safer terms than before, and, at the same time, full opportunity to define the content of each as the facts may require.
2. Race Psychology: Phylogenesis
...The phrase 'Race Psychology' is commonly used in a narrow sense, having reference to the characteristic mental peculiarities of various peoples, tribes, stages of civilization, cults, etc. That is, the word 'race' is applied to the human race. The points of comparison, on the other hand, between human and animal consciousness, fall under so-called Comparative Psychology. I take the liberty, however, of extending the meaning of the former phrase to include the history of consciousness, very much as the phrase 'race experience' is used to include the full wealth of inheritance derived, as it is held to be, from ancestral life of whatever kind. The problem of 'race psychology' then becomes the problem of the phylogenetic development of consciousness, just as 'individual psychology' deals with its ontogenetic development, both being legitimate branches of genetic as opposed to analytic psychology.
3. Analogies of Development: Epochs of Development
...The analogy of this series, again, with that of the infant's growth, is, in the main, very clear: the child begins in its pre-natal and early post-natal experience with blank sensations and pleasure and pain with the motor adaptations to which they lead, passes into a stage of apprehension of objects with response to them by 'suggestion,' imitation, etc., gets to be more or less self-controlled, imaginative, and volitional, and ultimately becomes reflective, social, and ethical.
...It is evident that if the objective epoch precedes the subjective -- if the child gets objects and reacts upon them at first without reflection, and only later deliberates upon their meaning to himself, and then aims at his own pleasure or profit in his behaviour toward them -- it is evident that there will be a great difference between the way he looks at other persons at these two stages of his growth respectively. Before he understands himself, that is, during the objective epoch, he cannot understand others, except as they are also objects of a certain kind; but in learning to understand himself, he also comes to understand them, as like himself, that is, as themselves having objects to act toward and upon just as he does. Here are, therefore, four very distinct phases of the child's experience of persons not himself, all subsequent to his purely affective or pleasure-pain epoch; first, persons are simply objects, parts of the material going on to be presented, mainly sensations which stand out strong, etc.; second, persons are very peculiar objects, very interesting, very active, very arbitrary, very portentous of pleasure or pain. If we consider these objects as fully presented, i.e. as in due relationship to one another in space, projected out, and thought of as external, and call such objects again projects, then persons at this stage may be called personal projects. They have certain peculiarities afterwards found by the child to be the attributes of personality; third, his own actions issuing from himself, largely by imitation, as we shall see, in response to the requirements of this 'projective' environment, having his own organism as their centre and his own consciousness as their theatre, give him light on himself as subject; and, fourth, this light upon himself is reflected upon other persons to illuminate them as also subjects, and they to him then become ejects or social fellows.
I insist upon this series of distinctions here, even though it be necessary to refer the reader ahead in my text for further justification of them; since it is the fundamental disregard of them which has vitiated much of the earlier work in infant and social psychology. The familiar 'psychologist's fallacy,' a fallacy which is so easy a refuge for inadequate insight, and so ready a screen for faulty analysis, will be permanently exposed only by the adoption of terms which forbid appeal to it. If by 'project' of persons we understand the infant's consciousness of others before he is conscious of himself, by 'subject' his consciousness of himself, and by 'eject,' as Clifford suggested, his consciousness of other persons as similar to himself, we have, I think, safer terms than before, and, at the same time, full opportunity to define the content of each as the facts may require.