The Function of Child Psychology in View of the Needs of our Society

The article is the introductory speech delivered at the congress of the Slovak Psychological Society. The author analyses individual social environments (family, nursery school, school and others) in which the child lives in the course of its development. He defines the share of these environments in shaping a universally developed personality. Special attention is given to analysing the adverse influences of the environment, which, being fixed on the basis of learning mechanism, result in the child4s misbehaviour. The pathological influence, especially that of the social environment, on the mental development is then defined as a subject of one of the most recent branches of psychology — the pathopsychology of the child. He attempts to define both research and practical tasks of child psychology and pathopsychology in view of the present-day and prospective needs of our society.