Introduction

Study of development has long been regarded as intrinsic to that psychological perspective which is distinctive of psychoanalysis. This study of development has been based on two complementary approaches, each of which is represented in Society presentations planned for this year: that which is retrospective, generally based on reconstruction through study of the transference, and that which is prospective, based on clinically informed study of lives at various points over time. Freud recognized the complementary contributions of these two approaches when he observed that:

So long as we trace development from its final outcome backwards, the chain of events appears continuous, and we feel that we have gained an insight which is completely satisfactory or even exhaustive. But if we proceed the reverse way, if we start from the premises inferred from the analysis and try to follow these up to the final result, then we no longer get the impression of an inevitable sequence which could not have been otherwise determined. … The synthesis is thus not so satisfactory as the analysis; in other words, from a knowledge of the premises we could not have foretold the nature of the result. … Hence the chain of causation can always be recognized with certainty if we follow the line of analysis, whereas to predict it along the line of synthesis is impossible [1920, pp. 167-168].

The genetic approach, emphasizing the extent to which later experience may be accounted for on the basis of earlier experience, particularly during