关键词: 威廉·斯特恩, 儿童人格发展, 批判人格主义, 辐合理论, 最近空间, 内受作用

Abstract: As one of the most important founders of modern child developmental psychology, William Stern made distinguished and original theoretical contributions to the research field of child personality development within the framework of his personalistic descriptive psychology. However, due to the time factor and various deeper reasons, this highly influential academic superstar in European psychology in his era has been widely neglected and even largely forgotten for a long time in the history of psychology after World War II. Unlike Jean Piaget and other early child developmental psychologists, Stern has not so far found a place in American child developmental psychology’s “hall of fame”. I would have to say that it is a pity. Stern’s creative, systematic and dialectical thoughts on child personality development are on the basis of his philosophy of critical personalism as a romantic and overarching worldview or system of thought. Quite ahead of his time, Stern’s ideas clearly embody the fundamental characteristics of a human science approach to child developmental psychology. To a great extent, those diary observations of their own three children that Stern and his wife recorded and accumulated over 18 years constitute the source of these many thoughts and ideas. Stern’s thoughts on child personality development mainly consist of three important dimensions or aspects. Firstly, holistic orientation. He considered child personality development to be the continuous integration into a unitas multiplex. That is to say, a vast multiplicity of psychological and physical interacting parts are being gradually gathered together into a unified whole by the developing child. Secondly, process orientation. He overcame “teleophobia” widespread in psychology at that time and understood child personality development as a fundamentally purposive or teleological in nature process. As a matter of fact, the inherently goal oriented nature is also indicative of the active nature of child personality development. Stern creatively put forward the theory of convergence to elucidate the dynamic of child personality development. According to him, the basic dynamic in the process of development comes from the interplay and interaction between individual endowments (including intentions and goals) and environmental conditions. Stern regarded child personality development as a dialectical process and put more emphasis on the tensions and continuous changes during the process of development. To his or her personality development, every child is a unique and creative entity. In addition to the unique nature and the creative nature of child personality development, Stern also paid attention to openness. He saw healthy child personality development as a process of moving from relatively less to relatively more openness to future over time. Finally, contextual orientation. Stern laid stress on the inherently contextual nature of child personality development and insisted that the child is gradually becoming himself or herself in the world he or she is living in. Stern’s thoughts on child personality development provided direct or indirect sources of thought for many later famous psychologists’ child developmental theories. These psychologists include Gordon Allport, Kurt Lewin, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Charlotte Bühler, Klaus Riegel, and so on.

Key words: William Stern, child personality development, critical personalism, convergence theory, proximal space, introception