Thursday, October 13, 2016

The Four Year Old

This reference goes way, way, back in my personal history. For various reasons, which should become obvious fairly quickly, I have decided to present it here. And I quote:


“If at times he seems somewhat voluble, dogmatic, boastful and bossy, it is because he is a blithe amateur swinging into fresh fields of self-expression. For a while he scarcely can be too concerned about the feelings of others. He is not quite as sensitive to praise [from others as when he was younger]. Instead he praises himself through bragging. Besides he is much less experienced than his brave verbal assertiveness might suggest. He has meager appreciation of disappointment and the personal emotions of others. He is inquisitively interested in death, but has scant comprehension of its meaning. He is plausible because his words often outrun his knowledge.

“[He] is a great talker. He is his own self-appointed commentator and often his own audience. He likes to use words, to try them out, to play with them. He likes new, different words…. [B]right, articulate [he] tends to run his topics to the ground, exhausting every verbal possibility…

“The key to [his] psychology is his high drive combined with a fluid mental organization. His imagery is almost mercurial. It moves from one form to another with careless ease….This same fluidity makes him a  fabricator and a fertile producer of alibis. It also makes it possible for him to dramatize any experience which comes within his ken.

“Social patterns are offset and in part defined by anti-social conduct….His boastfulness reaches towering ego-centric heights. But all this bravado is not as drastic as appears on the surface. [He] is feeling his powers and trying them out…

“Basically, [he] is more interested in socialization than in resistance. He shows this in his great fondness for dressing up and acting like grown-ups…He does not only don an adult hat; but he indulges in long telephone conversations, which echo the exact inflections of the adult voice….He also likes to make faces. This is still another method of identification with adults and perfecting his skill in reading their facial expressions. He is reading into, talking into and acting into the complexities of his culture.”


From: Infant and Child in the Culture of Today, Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg, (1943). Pp.225-228, describing “The Four Year Old”.

If only I had the video footage and the expertise to edit it! Alas, I can only imagine it in my mind's eye... Maybe someone else can make it a reality!