Henri Wallon (psychologist)

Henri Paul Hyacinthe Wallon (March 15, 1879 – December 1, 1962) was a French philosopher, psychologist (in the field of social psychology), neuropsychiatrist, teacher, and politician. He was the grandson of the historian and statesman Henri-Alexandre Wallon.

Henri Wallon

Quotes

L'enfant turbulent (The Turbulent Child) (1925)

The psychomotor development stage

• Contrary to current opinion, the offensive is far from being the usual principle of anger. [...] or at the emotional exaltation there is a reversal of the combative fury of the subject against himself. But even if the orientation of the anger remains exclusively offensive, it only seems to set in motion the appropriate automatisms by the explosion of a diffuse agitation, which mixes with it, makes them stumble, and often ends up hitting them. of asynergy and adynamia, by resolving them into convulsion or syncope. They appear to be for her only a progressive, late, unstable conquest.
  • L'enfant turbulent, Dr H. Wallon, éd. PUF, 1984 (1ère éd : 1925), partie I_ Le stade de développement psychomoteur, chap. Le stade émotif, p. 24

• Developing on another level, emotion is nonetheless, between automatism and objective action, a moment of psychic evolution. It forms the link between movement, which pre-exists, and consciousness, which it inaugurates. Incentives currently without outcome develop an erethism, the accumulated charge of which must explode, even if by transforming itself.
  • L'enfant turbulent, Dr H. Wallon, éd. PUF, 1984, partie I_Les stades de développements psycho-moteur, chap. I_ stade émotif, p. 61