ANDIn an autobiography published in 1952 by Clark University, Piaget tells us about the importance of understanding biographies as elements to explain an author’s work. Only then, he tells us, can it be considered a document of scientific interest.
Jean Piaget’s way of seeing the world was always governed by this principle: that of guaranteeing a critical and scientific view of daily events. It is also valid to decipher Piaget as a “philosophical spirit” who sought for more than thirty years to assertively express a personal idea, “without ever achieving it entirely.”
But before delving into the psychologist Piaget, it is necessary to know the human Piaget, the man and his ideals, his origins and his objectives.
Childhood and personal life of Jean Piaget
Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896. His father was a “scrupulous and critical spirit”, devoted to medieval literature and a lover of substantive talks, without fear of the controversies that could arise due to historical discrepancies and cultural. Piaget describes his mother as a woman “very intelligent, energetic and, deep down, truly kind”; However, her temperament was neurotic, which made family life difficult to manage.
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It was his mother’s neurosis that motivated Piaget to replace play with work at an early age, in this way, he felt that he was imitating his father and, at the same time, he could take refuge from family conflicts in a world deprived of knowledge and experiences. Despite this, Piaget always considered himself a public enemy of “any escape from reality,” and it may have been this that directed his interest toward the study of the problems of psychoanalysis and pathological psychology.
From a young age, Piaget showed a great interest in the scientific method and research. Between the ages of ten or eleven, he discovered a particular passion for birds and mollusks; In fact, while still a schoolboy, Piaget wrote a series of articles on the mollusks of Switzerland, Savoy, Brittany and Colombia. Many foreign academics wanted to meet Piaget, however, he never dared to introduce himself because he considered himself too young and inexperienced. Even the director of a well-known newspaper at that time rejected one of Piaget’s articles when he realized how old he was; he still needed two years to finish high school, although he already had the skill and command to compose very complete pieces. and valuable.
Piaget tells us about these episodes as “very useful” experiences for his scientific training; Thanks to them, he was able to glimpse science and what it represents in the face of important changes in adolescence. “Having had the early experience of these two types of problems has constituted,” Piaget writes in his autobiography, “the secret motive of my later activity in psychology.”
Religion was for Piaget, as for many academics of the time, a delicate issue. His mother, who was a convinced Protestant, insisted that Jean attend a six-week instructional course to learn the basics of Christian doctrine; His father, on the other hand, did not attend any church, but had interesting material in his personal library. It was there that Piaget found, at approximately the age of fifteen, The Philosophy of Religion Founded on Psychology and History, a work by Augusto Sabatier that brought great wealth to Piaget, helping him understand dogmas from symbolism, as well as the importance of a “dogmatic evolution” from philosophy.
Piaget describes this stage of his life as an “emotional shock” where he came to see the figure of God as Life, which allowed him to see in biology “the explanation of all things and of spirit itself.”
Piaget, the psychologist
Piaget’s life was always characterized by an abundance of unresolved questions and a tremendous desire to understand the mysteries of the mind and human behavior. Thus, Piaget’s interest was no longer limited to the spectrum of mollusks and animal biology, but instead leaned toward the study of biology and Psyche of the human being.
Piaget began this path by reading the great authors of philosophy, among them: Kant, Spencer, Augusto Compte, Fouillée and Guyau; and psychologists such as W. James, Th. Ribot and Janet. Furthermore, during the two years that preceded the completion of high school, Piaget took lessons in psychology, logic, and scientific methodology, although he could not do practical work in laboratories due to their absence; “In fact, there was not a single experimental psychologist in his hometown, not even at the university.
“The only thing I could do was theory, and write,” Piaget recalls in his autobiography.
The documentary is a great complement to understanding the concepts of Piagetian psychology from the mouth of its main author.
Piaget’s access to knowledge was much more limited than today; Piaget could only find writings from the French school that he was not able to understand, and that he could not verify due to the absence of tools for experimental scientific practice. “If I had known the works of Wertheimer and Kohler, I would have become a Gestaltist,” says Piaget.
Upon completing high school, Piaget enrolled in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and delved into his passionate study of mollusks; However, despite this tireless interest, it was also among his objectives to be able to join a university larger than the one in his hometown, equipped with a psychology laboratory in which he could carry out experimental practices. This led Piaget to move to Zurich after completing his studies in Sciences; In a much larger city, Piaget frequented the laboratories of GE Lipps, Wreschner, and Bleuler’s psychiatric clinic.
“I felt very soon that I was on the right path, and that by applying to psychological experimentation the mental habits that I had acquired in zoology, I would perhaps be able to solve the problems of the structure of the totality toward which I had directed myself through philosophical reflection.” ; comments Piaget.
Jean Piaget’s contributions to modern psychology
Piaget found his field of research in experimental psychology. He established relationships of logical-psychological parallelism in his writings and established a psychological perspective that sought to explain facts in terms of causality, while logic, when dealing with true propositions, describes forms in terms of ideal balance.
Piaget sent his first article to Journal of Psychology and not only was he accepted, but it also helped him establish a great friendship with Meyerson, who had interests very similar to his. Piaget continued to send articles to this and other journals, and progressively expanded his circle of colleagues and acquaintances.
Piaget attributes the decision to study children’s thinking to his “systematic spirit”, however, he would later return to the study of intelligence during the first two years of life. Later, the conclusions reached would lead him to “attack the problem of thought in general, and to build a psychological and biological epistemology.”
Piaget’s main contributions to psychology ultimately encompass the realm of children’s comprehensive thoughts — which, according to Piaget, are constructed through a series of channels that include listening, reading, experiencing, and exploring the place in which they live. lives or the environment in which it grows.
Piaget’s contributions are very important taking into account that, before, child psychology did not receive much importance; in fact, it practically did not exist.
Thanks to the contributions of Jean Piaget, we now know children reason and think differently during different stages of the developmental cycle. Furthermore, Piaget believed that all children passed through an invariable sequence of four cognitive stages:
- Sensorimotor (from birth to two years of age): during this stage, the child’s mental structure focuses mainly on the mastery of concrete objects.
- Preoperational (from two years to seven years): During this stage, the child masters all the symbols.
- Concrete (ages seven to eleven): During this stage, children learn how to reason and master number and relationship classes.
- Formal operation or abstract thinking (from the age of eleven): the fourth stage deals with the mastery of thought.
Today, we understand this theory as a useful way to reveal the mystery of the human mind, and we even talk about concepts and methods that are still used. All this makes Jean Piaget one of the most transcendental psychologists in history.
References: Piaget, J. (1952). Boring KA history of Psychology in Autobiography. Worcester, Clark University Press. Spanish translation by Montserrat Moreno