Arnold Gesell: a biography of this psychologist, philosopher and pediatrician

Arnold Gesell was an American psychologist, philosopher, and pediatrician that he studied child development. His performance as a teacher and writer between the 1920s and 1950s quickly positioned him as one of the great experts in parenting and parenting in America.

However, he has been most recognized because he developed a very important research method for modern psychology: the Gesell chamber. In this article we review the biography of Arnold Gesell, as well as some of the repercussions that his work has he had in studies on the development of children and how it was that he invented the observation camera that carries his Name.

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Biography of Arnold Gesell: physician, philosopher and educator

Arnold Gesell (1880-1961) was born in Wisconsin, United States. He was the eldest of 5 siblings, children of a photographer and a teacher, both strongly interested in early childhood education. With the intention of also becoming a teacher, Gesell

he was trained from a young age with the educator Edgar James Swift, who quickly detected Gesell's interest in child psychology and education.

Later he began to specialize in other disciplines. For example, he obtained a degree in philosophy in his hometown in 1903, while training in the psychology laboratory at the University of Wisconsin as well as in history and education.

He obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1906 and he eventually studied medicine at the University of Wisconsin as well, completing his doctorate in 1915. Soon enough, he served as an assistant professor at Yale University, where he founded a Child Development Clinic and worked as a school psychologist in Connecticut.

In this last city, Arnold Gesell began studying how the development of children with disabilities was, and later he came to the conclusion that to understand this, it was first necessary to understand what the development of children without disability. This was what finally led him to develop some principles of child development.

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Some contributions of Arnold Gesell

Gesell's influence comes from an idea that quickly became popular and remains in the imagination social to this day: the widespread belief that there is a kind of "schedule" in development childish. That is to say, a series of age-related stages characterized by typical behaviors.

Even though some previous authors, such as Sigmund Freud had already proposed theories about child development and its stages, were the contributions of Arnold Gesell, who were positioned as a point of reference on the subject, at least during his epoch.

His work revolves around the proposal that the maturation process can be aided or accompanied by a thoughtfully designed environment, so he quickly moved on to education.

During his research, Gesell focused on different moments of childhood development, as well as different characteristics. Some of the most important areas were motor development, adaptive behavior, and psychosocial behavior.

Theoretical influences

Gesell believed that these stages through which childhood passes, reproduce the stages through which the entire development and evolution of the human species has passed. That means that his theory of child development is strongly influenced by evolutionary theories which were very popular in America and Europe at the time.

Likewise, his theory is influenced by the studies that took place at the beginning of the 20th century where medicine began to raise the objective of knowing children better, in addition to the fact that at the same time there was a strong debate about binarism innate-learned.

Gesell believed that much of children's personalities and behaviors are inherited, but not a diagnosis had to be made in a hurry, especially in the case of those with a disability.

It coincided that at this time Gesell came to study medicine at Yale University, where he was assigned a room inside a pediatric clinic. He was in charge of treating various childhood problems. Thanks to his previous training as an educator and psychologist, he emphasized the bond with the parents of the children he treated, This was also seen as something novel, since this method was a bit more like education than medicine.

What's more, he distanced himself from psychometric methods which at that time were very popular and focused on assessing intelligence. Gesell preferred more qualitative methods, for example based on clinical observation of each child and each area.

Gesell's chamber

Influenced by his father, his photographer, Gesell used many technological resources in developing his theories. For example, he frequently uses photographic and video cameras as well as one-way mirrors to be able to observe in detail how children are doing.

In fact, this one-way mirror quickly became an observation camera, which consists of separating two rooms by a one-way vision mirror. The people in a room are reflected in that mirror, while the people in the room continue, not only are they not reflected, but they can see what is happening next to it.

The intention of this observation chamber is that researchers can observe what happens in the next room, without making other people feel self-conscious, that is, it allows them to act more spontaneously and naturally. This chamber is used to this day as a very important research and study method, and is known as the Gesell chamber.

Main works

Some of the major works by him are The Mental Growth of the Preschool Child (“The Mental Development of the Preschooler”) of 1925, and The Child From Five to Ten (The boy from 5 to 10 years), 1977.

Co-authored with other authors, Gesell develops in both books the idea of ​​the stages through which childhood passes. Likewise, they are considered two of the classic works of developmental psychology.

Bibliographic references:

• Weizmann, F. (2012). Arnold Gesell: The Maturationist. In Pickren, W., Dewsbury, D. and Wertheimer, M. (Eds.). Portraits of Pioneers in Developmental Psychology. Psychology Press: New York.