Hall’s developmental theory and Haeckel’s recapitulationism

Abstract

G. Stanley Hall was one of the leading American psychologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He is best known today for his administrative accomplishments—founding the first psychology research laboratory in the US, launching the American Journal of Psychology and other journals, presiding over Clark University, and assembling the American Psychological Association, among other things. In his time, though, he was also well known for his pioneering work in what came to be called developmental psychology. The theoretical foundation of this research was the recapitulationist evolutionary theory of his contemporary, Ernst Haeckel. Whereas Haeckel proposed that the embryonic development of each organism follows the evolutionary history of its species, Hall argued that the postnatal developmental path of the child’s mind and behaviour follows the evolutionary path of the human species as a whole. Thus, according to Hall, children are psychologically similar to “primitive” humans, and “primitive” humans are psychologically akin to our children of today. This article explores the relationship between Hall’s work and Haeckel’s.

Keywords:

• History of psychology
• evolution
• recapitulation
• G. Stanley Hall
• Ernst Haeckel

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1. Hall approvingly cited the Lamarckian theory of acquired characteristics in both Adolescence (Hall, 1904, Vol. 1, p. 50) and Senescence (Hall, 1922, p. 256) but, interestingly, he rarely mentioned Lamarck by name when listing his primary influences with respect to evolution.

2. There are several good sources of information on Hall’s life and career. The standard biography is Ross (1972). A useful sketch written during Hall’s own lifetime was written by Wilson (1914), and this is the basis of Thorndike’s (1925) National Academy of Science Memoir (both share the incorrect birth date of 1846). A more recent sketch can be found in Grinder (1967), but it could not benefit from Ross’ careful, exhaustive research. A more intimate and sympathetic account can be found in a biography written just after Hall’s death by his long-time associate, Pruette (1926). Finally there is the man’s autobiography (Hall, 1923). One must be careful to distinguish fact from fable in these sources, but I have selectively drawn on all of them here.

3. Granville was a name that Hall shared with his father and almost never used, except as the initial “G.” in formal publications.

4. Hall had no particular connection with Princeton, though he had published an article on Isaak August Dorner’s theology in the same journal a decade before (Hall, 1872, 1873). He may also have felt that the Princeton Review lent his ideas the weight of traditional authority, rather than their being seen as merely “popular” or even “radical”.

5. Hall is probably referring to The Education of the Human Race (Lessing, 1777/1883, p. 1) in which the author opened by declaring that revelation is to the human race what education is to the human individual.

6. See, for instance, Haeckel’s very public dispute with Rudolf Virchow in the late 1870s over whether teaching evolutionary theory in the high schools would lead socialism and political subversion (Kelly, 1981).

7. Grinder (1969, p. 356) contended that Hall “stood alone in the degree two which he applied antiquated principles of evolutionary theory to adolescent development”. This is true only in that Hall was nearly alone in attending specifically to adolescence. Many of the most important American psychologists of the era were working feverishly to integrate the science of mind with evolutionary theory.

8. Strickland and Burgess (1965) interestingly point out that the American Social Science Association had attempted to launch a major project into the study of children in 1881, but had been unable to garner adequate participation to move forwards. Hall seems to have been the right man at the right time.

9. One need not look far to see reflected here the Biblical hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher and other German theologians, a discipline in which Hall had been well trained at Union Seminary before his turn to psychology.

10. Hall seems to have felt that too many children were essentially incapable of real thought for an intellectually focused curriculum to serve what he once called “the army of incapables” (Hall, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 510).

11. Robert E. Grinder paraphrased this particularly well when he wrote: “Hall emphasized strongly that the child, so much older racially, was the father of the adolescent, and that, to bring the adolescent to maturity, nascent periods at every stage of development must be carefully nurtured” (Grinder, 1969, p. 361).