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Anyone seeking to learn all there is to know about development in adulthood will welcome New Dimensions in Adult Development. The authors have edited and added their own contributions to a work of encyclopaedic proportions. There are twenty-nine contributors for twenty-two chapters and it is divided into four parts: Transitions to Adulthood; New Concepts in Adult Development; Clinical Perspectives, and Applications of Adult Developmental Theory. The Editors thoroughly discuss each chapter, amplifying it within their own conceptual framework. Their book is an extension of their two previous efforts in the same area (Adult Development: A New Dimension in Psychodynamic Theory and Practice, 1981 and The Race Against Time: Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in the Second Half of Life, 1985).
Seven hypotheses were presented in their 1981 book: adult development is 'subject to environmental influences as is child development'; it is an 'ongoing dynamic process'; it is a 'continuing evolution of existing psychic structures and their functions'; 'a continuous vital interaction between fundamental issues of childhood continued in altered form' into adulthood; adulthood personalities are derived not only from childhood issues but from adult ones as well; physical processes affect psychological processes; it requires acceptance of physical decline and a variety of losses by death of friends, as well as the separation from maturing children, and realizing that not all of life's goals were achieved. In their 1985 book, they expanded on their model of adult development and introduced the concepts of adult developmental lines and adult developmental arrests, using detailed clinical data. They concluded that dynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in certain cases was clearly indicated and valid in the second half of life because development for everyone is very complex, drive functions vary widely, a variety of therapeutic techniques are now available, and modern therapists