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A Dialectic Integration of Development for the Study of Psychopathology

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Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

The field of developmental psychopathology was initially focused on efforts to understand the etiology of adult mental disorders by studying children and their disorders. However, this effort produced unanticipated changes in our understanding of pathology, individual development, and the role of social context. Among these modifications were the blurring of the division between mental illness and mental health, the need to attend to patterns of adaptation rather than personality traits, and the powerful influences of the social world on individual development. Current developmental views place deviancy in the dynamic relation between individuals and their contexts. From another perspective, the history of developmental psychopathology is an example of universal dialectical processes where action in the world, that is, research on mental illness, produces results that contradict the models that inspired that action, that is, linear models of individual psychopathology. Dialectical developmental processes are evident as we trace how patterns of adaptation by researchers, expressed in theoretical models and empirical paradigms, increasingly have come to match the complexities of human mental health and illness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Arnold J. Sameroff Ph.D.

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  1. Arnold J. Sameroff Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Arnold J. Sameroff Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Study of Child Development, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

    Michael Lewis

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

    Karen D. Rudolph

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Sameroff, A.J. (2014). A Dialectic Integration of Development for the Study of Psychopathology. In: Lewis, M., Rudolph, K. (eds) Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9608-3_2

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