The Diagnostics of Development and the Pedological Clinic for Difficult Children

Abstract

Pedological research on unmanageable children finds itself in a peculiar situation indeed. Researchers have quickly learned how to use an overall methodology, as it has taken shape recently in our theory and practice. And they have begun to apply this methodology, not without success. As a result they have been capable of dealing successfully with a series of relatively simple, but practically important, problems which life’s conditions require of pedology. This methodology quickly exhausted its possibilities, however, revealing the relatively narrow limits of its applicability. The investigators themselves unexpectedly discovered that they were drinking from a much shallower glass than they had imagined. The boundless possibilities which they had foreseen for this pedological methodology were, in practice, quickly exhausted; the methodology easily overcame the first and easiest obstacles in its path but proved powerless when confronted by more serious tasks, such as those arising from the very process of research. Thus, methodology is currently in a state of deep crisis, and its resolution should determine the next and most immediate steps in the development of pedological research into problem childhood.