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Contrary to the caricatured view of psychoanalysts' believing that human personality is largely formed in the first 5 years of life, contemporary theory regards development to be a life-long process. To be sure, the preoedipal striving towards a “depressive position” (Klein, 1975 [1935]), consolidation of an “intermediate area of experience” (Winnicott, 1953), and struggles of separation-individuation (Mahler et al., 1975) as well as the oedipal phase establishment of generational boundaries, superego, and incest barrier give the individual's character a certain psychosocial bent, but later developments during latency and adolescence (Blos, 1967) also play an important role in giving shape to the adult character. Moreover, growth does not stop here. Young adulthood helps fine tune both work-related and family-directed skills. Entry into marriage tests the capacity for intimacy and optimal distance. Becoming a parent mobilizes a renewed inner dialogue with internalized imagos of one's own parents. Middle age forces one to face changes in the body, letting go of children, and coming to terms with limits of acquisition and achievement. Still later, retirement from “the job” brings one to the bifurcation of marginalization and rediscovery of self in the road of life. And, finally, one has to encounter the issue of one's approaching death. At each step of this sojourn, new challenges for the psychic structure and social adjustment occur. Each forward movement tests the ego's resilience. Development, in other words, goes on till the last moment of one's life.
It is with such a backdrop in mind, that I have gathered a series of papers here that share two common elements. Each is developmentally oriented in its approach and addresses a particular era and/or major transition in the course of life. Each utilizes a set of movies to illustrate and highlight its thesis. The movies selected by the authors of these papers underscore regressive and progressive movements in developme