Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:03:09.467Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Clinical Significance of Social Maturity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Edgar A. Doll*
Affiliation:
The Training School at Vineland, New Jersey

Extract

A well-known novelist recently made the cogent statement that nothing that happens is important except as it happens to some person. Just as there is no sound without an ear to hear it, so there is no behaviour without some person to observe or experience it. We may elaborate this thought into the dogmatic statement that no behaviour is important except in terms of its social value. While this is not strictly true of those intimate experiences which take place within the self as a unique organism, nevertheless even such intimate personal behaviour is irrelevant to everyone else except in terms of its social impact.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1935 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

“A Genetic Scale of Social Maturity.” Presented before the American Orthopsychiatric Association, February, 1935. Published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. v, Xo. 2, April, 1935. “The Measurement of Social Competence.” Presented before the American Association on Mental Deficiency. Publication anticipated in the Annual Proceedings of the American Association on Mental Deficiency, 1935. “The Vineland Social Maturity Scale : Manual of Directions.” Published in the Training School Bulletin, voi. xxxii, Xos. 1-4, March-June, 1935.Google Scholar

Since this was written we have completed a preliminary standardization based on 600 normal subjects as well as differential standardization on 300 mentally deficient subjects. These results are now being prepared for publication.Google Scholar

The term “feeble-minded” in this article follows the U.S. usage as synonymous with “mentally deficient” rather than the British usage which is equivalent to “moron” in the U.S.Google Scholar

These data are illustrative only. In our further work we are employing much more precise calibration methods which give more reliable results than these.Google Scholar

Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.