Rational Care for the Sentimental Child: Emotional Styles and Professional Instruction of Caregivers in Mandatory Palestine

Sentimentality – the tendency to be motivated by emotions – was largely discredited in Western culture as an emotional style by the early twentieth century and was mostly associated with women, children, colonized people and the mentally ill. Child psychology also emerged in Europe at the turn of the century, as a scientific discipline dedicated to the rational research, cultivation and treatment of human emotions. Under the influence of psychoanalysis, it established children's tendency to be motivated by emotions as natural and legitimate. With the rise in the importance of scientifically trained professionals within industrializing states and imperial bureaucracies, psychology became crucial for national and colonial attempts to turn sentimental children into rational, socially functional adults. Focusing on the ways early Zionist psychologists and educators envisioned the emotional style of the ‘new’ Jewish child and his (and her) caregivers in mandatory Palestine, the article asks how these professionals constructed the distinctions between the sentimental child and the rational caregiver to promote an emotional style that would fit the needs of this national settlement project. Following scholars like Peter and Carol Stearns, William Reddy, and Benno Gammerl, it seeks to contribute to understanding how emotional styles emerge and what is the human agency in such processes.