Some Philosophical and Historical Considerations Relevant to William Stern’s Contributions to Developmental Psychology

During the first third of the 20th century, William Stern (1871–1938) was a prominent contributor to the literature of developmental psychology. Many of his most important contributions, some of which were made in collaboration with his wife Clara Stern, were based on diary observations of the three Stern children; observations that the Sterns accumulated over 18 years. Even as these contributions were materializing, William Stern was formulating and articulating an overarching system of thought, a Weltanschauung or worldview, that he called “critical personalism.” This brief article highlights certain aspects of that system of thought that were of particular relevance to Stern’s contributions to developmental psychology. The article also contrasts the pre-World War II reception of Stern’s ideas among developmental psychologists and differential psychologists, and, within developmental psychology, the reception of those ideas before as compared with after World War II.