OUTLINE OF A STUDY OF THE SELF n 



3. The Self in Childhood (Thieid to Twelfth Years) 



(a) Environmental influences. Was your childhood spent in the country 

 or the city ? Which do you consider the better environment for a child ? Why ? 

 How did your home, clothing, food, toys, playmates compare, so far as you may 

 judge, with those of the average child in your community ? Were you contented 

 and happy during childhood ? If not, why not ? How, as you now view it, 

 could the circumstances of your childhood have been improved to your advan- 

 tage ? What factors in your environment influenced you most strongly ? 



(b) Physical development. Had you any physical defects which persisted 

 from infancy or appeared during childhood ? What ? What was done for 

 them ? What should have been done ? Give your height and weight at inter- 

 vals from birth to date, if you can. Did you develop rapidly ? What relation 

 has your weight usually borne to your height ? Has this any special significance ? 

 Were you normally strong, active, energetic; a lover of athletics, or of sedentary 

 pastimes ? Amount of illness during chfldhood ? What diseases or serious 

 injuries ? What after-effects ? 



(c) Mental development. Were you precocious or backward in mental 

 development ? At what age did you enter school ? What were your inteUectual 

 attainments at the time ? Which parent, if either, did you most resemble in 

 your mental development and tendencies ? Had you any defective sense organs 

 or sense peculiarities ? Were they corrected ? Might they have been ? Were 

 your senses keen ? To what could you most naturally and easfly attend ? 

 Could you best remember the exact words or the general ideas of a lesson ? 

 What kind of information could you remember most easily and accurately ? 

 Discuss, as your memory and information from parents, relatives, teachers, 

 enable you to, the following aspects of your mental life: memory, imagination, 

 judgment, reasoning, emotional tendencies, especially fears, acquired as well as 

 innate (describe each with fulness with respect to its origin and causes, or con- 

 ditions, as well as its history and present condition), instincts (collecting, play, 

 imitation, wandering, fighting, chimmiing), plays, ideals, scholarship. 



