Book Description

This book is based on a course of lectures delivered, since 1912, in over a half-dozen universities and schools of education. It is the outgrowth of more than seventeen years of labor, in several states, devoted to mentally, educationally, and socially abnormal children. This work has included the individual examination of seven thousand cases, the organization and administration of systems of developmental and reconstructive training, and the perusal of the avalanche of books and articles which have appeared during this period in the highly productive field of psychological and educational tests and mental hygiene, and in cognate fields. The book aims to give a fairly adequate picture of the inner mechanism of the psychological and psychoeducational clinic, and to touch incidentally upon various topics in abnormal psychology with which the clinical psychologist, mental and educational tester, special-class teacher, visiting teacher, social worker, medical student preparing for work in mental hygiene, and others interested in abnormal-behavior problems should be familiar. A comprehensive survey, in spite of necessary brevity, will furnish orientation and perspective, show the relationship between topics, and supply the essential groundwork for further study. This book will serve its purpose if it succeeds in opening up the field for the general reader, and in supplying a broad foundation of facts, procedures, and principles on which the technical worker may build. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).