Image: Guiding the Child by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 3 out of 10. A book that was progressive when published in 1930 as it provided information about new ways of parenting and educating troubled children but is now most useful as a historical reference.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD, author of unJoy / 12.17.2020; No. 26
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Star Rating – 3 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Authors
Alfred Adler (author and editor)
Regine Seidler, Ladislaus Zilah, Olga Knopf, Erwin Wexberg, Martha Holub, Arthur Zanker, Alice Friedmann, Oskar Spiel, Ferdinand Birnbaum, Theodor Zerner, Alexandra Adler, Alexander Müller, Alexander Neuer, Ida Loewy, Sophie Lazarfeld, Elly Rothwein, Arthur Holub, Friederike Friedmann, Lydia Sicher, Theodor Vértes, Paul Brodsky
Benjamin Ginzberg (translated German edition to English)
About the author and editor
Alfred Adler, MD, (1870 – 1937) was an Austrian physician who initially specialized in ophthalmology and later pursued neurology and psychiatry. He was considered to be one of the first leaders to break away from Freud, who exerted substantial control over other psychoanalysts at the time. Dr. Adler developed a form of psychotherapy called Individual Psychology. He influenced many thought leaders in psychology and psychiatry and made important clinical contributions. His most famous concept was the inferiority complex, which addresses self-esteem and other aspects of personality development. In the 1920s, he established numerous child guidance clinics in Austria. His ideas on humanistic approaches to parenting have been so long-standing and influential that many of the most effective current parenting approaches would be categorized under the Adlerian model.
General description
Guiding the Child is a book about the care provided in 28 child guidance clinics throughout Vienna, Berlin and Munich that drew their approaches from Dr. Adler’s Individual Psychology approaches. Dr. Adler wrote one of the 21 chapters and then served as editor for the entire book. For the most part, this book does not teach parenting approaches or provide in-depth descriptions of the tenets of Individual Psychology. Instead, it provides a glimpse into the challenges and successes of the child guidance clinics through a variety of chapter essays and patient examples. Topics covered in this book include:
Activities of educational guides at the clinics
“Securing the confidence of those who come for guidance”
“Discovery of the sources of educational errors”
“Encouragement”
“Stimulating the social sentiments”
The tasks of the physician in educational guidance
Diagnosis
Therapy
Enlightenment
Scripts of therapeutic interactions on specific topics
Feelings of inferiority
The “hated” child
The only child
Selective mutism
Unique and most important aspects
Guiding the Child likely was a momentous book when it was published in 1930, but it is clearly not what most would consider a parenting book by today’s standards. The book provides some interesting and, at times, entertaining case studies but it does not go into any significant depth on these approaches, so this book serves best as a historical reference. While the book promised in 1930 to be of “inestimable value to the welfare worker, the physician, and forward-looking parent,” today’s parents are unlikely to learn to be better parents from reading this book and therapists are not likely to teach parents more effective strategies from reading it. Important concepts in this book include:
Demonstrating why it is absurd to beat your children. Instead, work to understand them and communicate with them effectively
Helping children find meaningful roles and tasks within the family to decrease negative behaviors
Showing the power of encouraging rather than scolding a child
Addressing the sexual behavior of children
Best quotes
“In the guidance clinic the child sees that he is surrounded with people who treat him as an equal. Here he is not only not scolded for his mistakes, but he is, on the contrary, shown how he has erred, and he is told that there can be no obstacle in the way of his return to the useful side of life. The conviction thus forces itself on the child (just as it does upon the parents and educators): ‘I am here in the presence of a person who means well by me.’”
“The child and the educator must not leave the guidance clinic without the inner conviction: I can enter upon a new road.”
“In the same evening, for instance, a mother of a 10-year-old girl came up with the following story: The girl sucks her thumb and in such an intensive way that ‘the thumb has become quite thin.’”
“Beating can only lead to a discouragement of the child, and we know well enough that this can make the child worse and not better. In refutation of this maxim we often hear it said that numerous eminent men were beaten in their childhood. But the necessity of beating is certainly the last thing proved by such examples. These men attained eminence, not because of, but in spite of the beating.”
Who would enjoy this book?
Any mental health trainee or professional desiring an original or historical view of relationship-based (humanistic) parenting approaches would likely enjoy Guiding the Child.
Who would not enjoy this book?
Parents or therapists who are looking for a practical and approachable book on relationship-based parenting might not enjoy Guiding the Child, and I would direct them to Dr. John Gottman’s Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting (See Len’s Book Review) instead.
Conclusion
Guiding the Child was progressive when published in 1930 as it provided information about new ways of parenting and educating troubled children but is now most useful as a historical reference.