Thinking faculty

THE CRADLE OF THOUGHT: Peter Hobson; Pan Macmillan Ltd., Pan Macmillan, 20, New Wharf Road, London N19RR. £.20.

"MAN, THE Thinking Animal, aspiring to godhead from insensible clay, he travels slow-footed towards the eternal day". — Sri Aurobindo

Of all of man's faculties, which qualify him to be superior to other living species, it is that of thinking — its process, nuances and variability that has been a subject of great fascination. Philosophers, religious heads, educationists, psychologists, sociologists and development researchers have all delved into the evolution and complexity of thought. While recent publications have spanned a variety of themes such as critical thinking, thinking dispositions, and source books on infant activities and ways of augmenting them, few have been as organised and scientific in their presentation as the book under review by the author, who is the Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, based at the Tavistock Clinic in London.

He is a unique combination of a physician psychiatrist, and doctor in experimental child psychology, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and a keen researcher. This varied expertise is well mirrored in his latest publication, which has attempted to trace the mental life, especially the thinking prowess of human beings. Much of the research was undertaken at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, where Michael Rutter had completed decades of research in the subject of child and adolescent psychiatry.

The first chapter, which beholds the readers to "Just Think... .", is the story of evolution of thought using largely clinical methods of observation of infants, abnormally developing babies, adults with mental disorder and chimps and guerrillas. The various case vignettes used and the use of different strategies such as photographs of persons revealing emotions, study of imitation behaviour, response to adults in the environment are not just fascinating, but reveal a rigour in the research methods deployed.

The capacity of the year-old baby to happily imitate the world around her, bringing things for mother to see so that they might share experiences, and learning what things mean, is indeed well illustrated. A comparison with autistic children seems inevitable, and often very revealing as in the case of non-emotional issues where the autistic children seem no different from normal ones.

Several maternal factors have been implicated in the development of a child's IQ — the mother's feelings of security, her ability to think coherently, her own childhood relationships, and the degree of parent-child synchrony. While not disputing any of these, we cannot but help wonder about the IQ of Indian children of lower and middle class families, many of whom are one among a largish brood of five or more with the mother often feeling overwhelmed by the domestic chores to be able to offer them her undiluted attention. As we go along we cannot help thinking "Is the mind really that fragile?"

The author points out that women with a borderline personality disorder have trouble to form intimate relationships and have confused styles of thinking about their past and present relationships, a feature familiar to psychiatrists in clinical practice. Descriptions of the British countryside and references to Wordsworth and Coleridge are refreshing.

That man cannot function "isolated" and social interaction is critical to the development of all faculties — thinking, perceptions, emotions and associations — is the overarching theme of the book. The reference to both psychoanalytical and the behavioural methods of understanding the development of these faculties, while certainly rendering a comprehensiveness to the book, would require the younger reader to patiently deal with a great deal of information and detail.

R. THARA

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