Abstract
This chapter presents my translation of a text authored by William Stern and originally published in 1930 in the German language Journal for Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs. In this work, Stern shows in rich detail the manner in which a quintessentially psychological phenomenon, recollection, is understood from a personalistic perspective. The development of recollective abilities during childhood is discussed extensively. The chapter is instructive not only with respect to the nature and developmental course of recollection specifically, but also as a model for the way in which personalistic thinking can be brought to bear on topics of theoretical importance in psychology generally.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 1 in the original text: [This discussion is the Part I of a forthcoming book by Clara and William Stern titled ‘The Development of Recollection in Early Childhood,’ fourth completely revised edition, published in Leipzig by Johann Ambrosius Barth.]
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Notes
- 1.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 2 in the original text: [Consult further in this regard especially: Studies in Personalistic Science: Personalistics as Science. Leipzig 1930.]
- 2.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 3 in the original text: [Because of this dual directionality, personal chronology is fundamentally different from mathematical chronology, that recognizes the course of things in one direction: from the past to the present to the future.]
- 3.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 4 in the original text: [That such apparently completely ‘forgotten’ periods of one’s life can nevertheless have the strongest ongoing mnemonic effects on one’s entire life is, in accordance with what was said earlier, a given. One need think here only about the entirely normal ‘amnesia’ with respect to the experiences of the first years of life.]
- 4.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 5 in the original text: [That work was written for the edited volume ‘Contemporary Philosophy in Self-Presentations,’ Volume VI.]
- 5.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 6 in the original text: [On the superposition of personal presences of varying magnitudes, see Studien zur Personwissenschaft I, pp. 118 and 132; see also Günther Stern: On having, p. 127.]
- 6.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 7 in the original text: [Here, too, we have a concept incompatible with the mathematical conception of time.]
- 7.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 8 in the original text: [When I am traveling, I can say without any inner contradiction: ‘I am ‘now’ teaching in Hamburg.’]
- 8.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 9 in the original text: [One encounters often the quote from Nietzsche: ‘My memory says that I did that. My pride says implacably, that I could not have done that. Ultimately, memory surrenders.’ (Beyond Good and Evil, Nr. 68).]
- 9.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 10 in the original text: [For more regarding this ‘plasticity of the past’ as a principle of general history: Wertphilosophie, p. 293, where I wrote: ‘The petrified stiffness of the past holds only for the abstractions of natural science, not for history. A Brutus and a Caesar, a Jesus and a Goethe are changed as truly historical powers even now; there are connections and meanings that in their times, and to those individuals themselves, were foreign …’]
- 10.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 11 in the original text: [Refer in this connection to the four part ‘developmental formula: diffusion, salience, embeddedness, increased sectioning’ discussed in Studies in the Science of Persons, I, p. 42.]
- 11.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 12 in the original text: [Up to now, these ‘sensory images’ have been more closely examined predominantly in higher ages than are relevant to us here, primarily by Jaensch and his colleagues. However, Jaensch’s hypothesis is very plausible: that the major function of these sensory images is to form an undifferentiated preparatory form out of which, in turn, perceptions and ideas are worked into their specific forms and different temporal connections.]
- 12.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 13 in the original text: [The expression ‘familiarity qualities’ comes from Höffding.”]
- 13.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 14 in the original text: [The concrete expressions of the above-named law are quite varied. So, for example, the reader should note that in the child’s development of speech the infantile forms used to name current effort or what is presently being done are acquired earlier than the participles (‘drink’ earlier than ‘drank’), and that among time adverbs the words ‘morning’, ‘then’, ‘soon’ are used sensibly earlier than ‘yesterday’, ‘before’, ‘earlier’.]
- 14.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In brackets I present here what Stern included as footnote 15 in the original text. In it, Stern is quoting his own text, The Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 424: [It is absurd to juxtapose within a child such a perfect, content-rich, and segmented unconscious with such an immature consciousness.]
- 15.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In footnote 16 of the text on which this translation is based, Stern indicated that the source of this quoted passage was his own text, The Psychology of Early Childhood. In the fourth edition of that book, which was published in 1927 (Stern, 1927), the passage appears on pp. 204–205.
- 16.
TRANSLATOR NOTE: In footnote 17 of the text on which this translation is based, Stern indicated that the source of this quoted passage was his own text, The Psychology of Early Childhood. In the fourth edition of that book, which was published in 1927 (Stern, 1927), the passage appears on pp. 339–40.
- 17.
See Stern and Stern (1999).
References
Stern, C., & Stern, W. (1999). Recollection, testimony, and lying in early childhood (J. T. Lamiell, Trans.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books.
Stern, W. (1927). Psychologie der frühen Kindheit bis zum sechsten Lebensjahre, vierte überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage (The psychology of early childhood up to the sixth year of life, fourth revised and expanded edition). Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle & Meyer.
Stern, W. (1930). Personalistik der Erinnerung. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 118, S. 350–381.
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Lamiell, J.T. (2021). The Personalistics of Recollection. In: Uncovering Critical Personalism. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67734-3_5
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