Growth as Related to Mental Health

Abstract

but fleetingly and is already changing by the time it is conceived. If Ted Williams hits safely once in three times at bat, every schoolboy in America can give you his batting average. Can anyone say with any conviction that the schoolboy's batting average in growth was, say, .333 last month? Hardly, and yet one has a sort of stubborn feeling that, by the shades of Einstein, we can in some way find a little satisfaction in our quest for a yardstick. In biology we learn to study not only the organism but also its habitat, for whatever grows, grows in something, lives in something, is related to things, responds or doesn't respond to certain things. The organism seems to grow according to certain laws, and it seems to need certain conditions in order to fulfill its destiny in the cosmos. So, we see evolving a pattern of study-we can observe the human organism in its growth, we can observe under what laws its growth is governed. We can study optimal, average, unfavorable, and impossible conditions for growth. The very fact that we can discern so many different facets of the phenomena of growth makes it necessary for us to apply the methods and learnings of many differene social and scientific disciplines to our study. We must be oriented to geography, to space and time, to sociology, economics, chemistry, physics, psychology, and to many more. Neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, pathology, physiological chemistry, even the new field of electronics-all contribute to our growing knowledge. Our knowledge of the physical being of the human form dates back only a few moments in the long his-