SIGNED. Infant Development

New York: Harper, 1952. First edition.

FIRST EDITION ILLUSTRATED MONOGRAPH ON EARLY CHILD DEVELOPMENT BY ARNOLD GESELL, FOUNDER OF YALE CHILD STUDY CENTER, SIGNED BY AUTHOR.

15.5x24 cm hardcover, red cloth binding, gilt title to cover and spine, inscribed and signed by author on title page, "For my now eminent kid brother, Arnold Xmas 1951". i-xi, 108 pp, photographic Illustrations. Very good in very good price-clipped dust jacket with edge tears, in protective mylar cover. FROM THE PREFACE: "Over a period of more than thirty-five years, the work of the former Clinic of Child Development at Yale University has been reported from time to time in the form of books, monographs, numerous papers, and a score of edited sound and silent films. Our interest in cinematography as both a research and a teaching tool, lies in the background and the foreground of the present volume, ... More recently the writer was afforded a unique opportunity to assist in the production of a new type of film, namely, a conceptual film dealing with the principles and pediatric applications of a clinical science of child development. ... With the completion of the conceptual film and of the systematic survey covering the first ten years of life, it seemed desirable to gather into a single, concise view the theoretical and practical implications set forth in the underlying studies. ... The concealed process of growth is revealed in its products. We hope that the pictorial chapter will give a compact intimation of the organic sweep of the early life cycle. Embryology deals with the genesis and growth of organic forms, physical and functional, postnatal as well as prenatal. The patterning of infant behavior therefore falls within the scope of embryology." Illustrated with striking black and white photographs of fetus, infant and child; models of neurological patterns; photomicrographs of brain and retina; and line drawings of behaviors. DR.

ARNOLD LUCIUS GESELL (1880 – 1961) was an American clinical psychologist, pediatrician and professor at Yale University known for his research & contributions to the field of child development. Gesell made use of the latest technology in his research. He used the newest in video and photography advancements. Gesell's ideas came to be known as Gesell's Maturational Theory of child development. Based on his theory, he published a series of summaries of child development sequences, called the Gesell Developmental Schedules. Gesell's work was reviewed by S. Curtis in "'Tangible as tissue': Arnold Gesell, infant behavior, and film analysis," Sci Context. 2011 Sep;24(3):417-42: "From 1924 to 1948, developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell regularly used photographic and motion picture technologies to collect data on infant behavior. The film camera, he said, records behavior "in such coherent, authentic and measurable detail that ... the reaction patterns of infant and child become almost as tangible as tissue." This essay places his faith in the fidelity and tangibility of film, as well as his use of film as evidence, in the context of developmental psychology's professed need for legitimately scientific observational techniques. It also examines his use of these same films as educational material to promote his brand of scientific child rearing. But his analytic techniques - his methods of extracting data from the film frames - are the key to understanding the complex relationship between his theories of development and his chosen research technology."