



Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed
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  PSYCHOLOGY
  AND PARENTHOOD

  BY

  H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

  Author of “The Riddle of Personality,” “Scientific
  Mental Healing,” etc.

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
  1919

  COPYRIGHT, 1915
  BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

  TO
  MY SISTER
  ROBERTA BRUCE PEMBERTON




PREFACE


The chief aim of this informal “handbook for parents” is to review and
unify, in non-technical language, the findings of modern psychology
which bear especially on the laws of mental and moral growth. The
time has come when it is not only desirable but necessary to attempt
something of this sort; for in the course of their labours the
educational, medical, and social psychologists have accumulated a
mass of data revealing unsuspected defects, and hinting at marvellous
possibilities, in the upbringing of the young.

On the one hand, they have shown that not enough heed has been paid to
the hampering influences of an unfavourable environment and physical
maladjustment; and, on the other hand, they have made it clear that, by
instituting certain reforms, it is entirely feasible to develop mental
and moral vigour in the mass of mankind to an astonishing degree. My
own belief, indeed, for reasons set forth in subsequent pages, is that
the discoveries of the modern psychologists justify the assertion that,
through proper training in childhood, it is possible