Psychoanalytic Theories of Development

A review of psychoanalytic theories of development from Freud to the present day, with the presentation of the authors' own theory of psychosexual development as evolving dynamically and simultaneously with other systems such as emotional, behavioural, cognitive and social ones.

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This book presents an integration of psychoanalytic theories of human development from Freud to the present, showing their implications for the evaluation and treatment of children and adults. The authors not only review the literature on emotional growth but also provide a developmental theory of their own, one that examines psychosexual development in the context of a number of other simultaneously evolving systems - emotional, behavioural, cognitive, and social - all of which work in relation to one another in a dynamic way. They describe the developmental sequences of these systems and how they coalesce to form the human personality. The authors view development as it occurs rather than retrospectively from reconstructions of earlier life experience. They begin by tracing the history of this perspective, describing the developmental process, then reviewing psychoanalytic theories of development. They present developmental sequences for psychosexuality, object relations, the sense of self, affect, cognition, the superego, gender identity, and the ego. Throughout they maintain a central and orienting focus on the intrapsychic - on what happens in the mind as it evolves.
They view perceived and felt interpersonal interactions as working in conjunction with innate factors to provide the basis for the internal world. According to the authors, it is the evolution and elaboration of this internal world that is the domain of the psychoanalytic theory of development.