The Winding Path

I suspect that many people other than parents don’t invest a lot of time or effort in trying to understand human development. After all, when you eat an apple you don’t really care much about where it grew, what conditions it grew in, etc. You just want to know that it tastes good now. Likewise if you’re happy with your life now, who cares about how you grew up!

But just like that apple if you don’t grow in the right environment you don’t grow well. If you’re happy and living to your full potential, then great, you grew up well despite any stumbles you may have made along the way.

Yet many of us aren’t in that situation. We’re either unhappy or have not reached our full potential. Some of what I’ve written so far deals with the present and with how to improve the future. For the next few posts I’m going to turn around and look at how we got here. Or at least look at some of the theories. That may help us understand ourselves better, and smooth the path for others. I’m sure that’s something parents (or parents-to-be, like I hope to be one day) would care a lot about (though judging by some of the scary sights, sounds and smells in shopping centres, some parents really don’t care).

So since I’m studying Human Development at the moment as part of my Psychology degree, I thought I’d take some time to summarise what I’ve learnt, and to provide some further sources of information for anyone interested in more detail.

I’ll be presenting an overview of Human Development from the five perspectives listed below, and I’ll be answering the questions of how important early years are for later development, and how do people contribute to their own development versus the contribution of their environment.

If you have any other questions along the way feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them, though keep in mind that I’m studying an introductory unit at the moment.

1. Psychoanalytic/Psychosocial Perspective

   The psychoanalytic perspective looks at the conscious and unconscious processes that influence a person’s development. Sigmund Freud is most famously associated with psychoanalysis, and his work has undoubtedly had a huge influence on our understanding of psychology, even if it was just in encouraging others to discredit him.

2. Biological Perspective

   The question of nurture versus nature. How do genes and the environment influence development? How much of an influence does each have? How do the two forms of influence combine? What research has been done to figure all this out?

3. Social-Emotional Perspective Part 1 | Part 2

   How does interaction with other people as well as with the immediate environment influence development? What types of interaction have what forms on influence, and how does that shape behaviour? Where does emotion come into play?

4. Cognitive Perspective

   What is intelligence? How is it measured? How does it develop? Even though he was originally a biologist, Jean Piaget did some important work on the study of the development of thinking. This section will focus on his theory.

5. Socio-cultural Perspective

   Finally we’ll look at development from broader perspectives including the less direct influences of society and culture. We’ll also take a peek at the development of language and thought as described by Lev Vygotsky.

So there’s an outline of what’s coming up soon. Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to know about those topics, or if you’d like to hear anything else from me feel free to leave a comment or contact me via my contact page.

Related entries:

• Introduction to Human Development: Psychoanalytic/Psychosocial Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Biological Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Social-Emotional Perspective - Part 1
• Introduction to Human Development: Social-Emotional Perspective - Part 2
• Introduction to Human Development: Cognitive Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Socio-cultural Perspective

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Human Development, Learning, Personal Development, Psychology, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.