Arnold Lucius Gesell

1880-1961

Arnold Gesell was a psychologist and pediatrician who pioneered the use of motion-picture cameras to study the physical and mental development of normal infants and children; his books influenced child rearing in the United States. As director of the Clinic of Child Development at Yale University (1911–48), he collected and published a vast quantity of data on the development of young normally developing children

Gesell received his Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University in 1906 and his M.D. from Yale in 1915. In 1911, soon after his arrival at Yale, he set up a "psycho-clinic" at the New Haven Dispensary, later known as the Clinic of Child Development, which he directed from 1930 to 1948. From 1915 to 1948, Gesell was Professor of Child Hygiene at Yale. He and his associates were initially part of the Institute of Human Relations. Gesell's Clinic was the forerunner of the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

A Few Writings of Arnold Gesell, chronologically arranged

Gesell, A. (1912). The normal child and primary education NY: Ginn & Co.

Gesell, A. (1925). The mental growth of the pre-school child: A psychological outline of normal development from birth to the sixth year, including a system of developmental diagnosis. NY: Macmillan.

Gesell, A. (1928). Infancy and human growth. NY: Macmillan.

Gesell, A. (1929). Maturation and infant behavior pattern. Psychological Review, 36, 307-319.

Gesell, A. & Thompson, Helen (1934). Infant behavior: Its genesis and growth. NY: McGraw Hill.

Gesell, Arnold (1940). Wolf child and human child: Being a narrative interpretation of the life history of Kamala, the wolf girl. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.

Gesell, Arnold & Ilg, Frances L. (1943). Infant and child in the culture of today. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers.

Gesell, Arnold & Amatruda Catherine S. (1947). Developmental diagnosis. NY: Harper.

Gesell, Arnold (1945). The embryology of behavior. NY: Harper.

Gesell, Arnold. & Ames, Louise Bates (1947). The development of handedness. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 70, 155-175.

Gesell, Arnold, Ilg, Frances & Ames, Louise Bates (1956). Youth: The years from ten to sixteen. NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers.

Gesell, A. (1954). The ontogenesis of infant behavior. In L. Carmichael, Ed., Manual of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley and Sons.

Gesell, A., Ilg, F.L., & Ames, L.B. (1974). Infant and Child in the culture of today: The guidance of development in home and nursery school. New York: Harper & Row.

Gesell, A., Ilg, F.L., & Ames, L.B. (1977). The child from five to ten. New York: Harper and Row.

Writings about Arnold Gesell

Ames, L. B. (1989). Arnold Gesell—themes of his work. NY: Human Sciences Press.

Crain, W.C. (1979). Gesell’s maturational theory. In Theories of development: Concepts and applications (pp. 20-32). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fagan, T.K. (1987) Gesell: The first school psychologist, Part I: The road to Connecticut. School Psychology Review, 16 (1), 103-107

Fagan, T.K. (1987). Gesell: The first school psychologist, Part II: Practice and significance. School Psychology Review, 16 (3), 399-409.

Kaufman, A.S. (1971). Piaget and Gesell: A psychometric analysis of tests built from their tasks. Child Development, 42, 1341-1360.

Salkind, N.J. (1985). Arnold Gesell and the maturational model. In Theories of human development (pp. 11-14, 43-60). New York: John Wiley & Sons.