Issues in Psychological Development

Abstract

The domain of inquiry we call human development is too full of controversy and too deficient in sturdy theory to permit any scholar to be confident of the many popular propositions that parade as conclusions. But the last two decades of research have clarified certain themes that can be grouped into four questions that dominate the books and papers written by developmental psychologists:

• 1. What structures are preserved in ontogeny, either in the same form, which is rare, or in altered form, which leads us to call them derivatives? For example, if it turns out that an infant’s attachment to the mother is necessary for later adult intimacy, one would say that some psychological structure created in the first year was preserved, albeit in altered form.

• 2. What are the mechanisms of change in development that lead to transformation, loss, or replacement of older structures? I pose the question this way even though I appreciate that many authorities believe that no psychological structures are ever lost or replaced; they are only difficult to elicit.

• 3. What are the psychological growth functions for emergent competences or dispositions?

• 4. What determines differences in rate of growth of specific qualities and the content and profile of structures? This is the individual difference question so popular among investigators of personality.