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The authors' purpose in writing this book was to delineate the normal development of adulthood and to indicate the relationship between faulty development and psychopathology. They undertook this task because they found developmental concepts very useful in their work as clinicians and educators.
In the book they trace interest in human development back to antiquity. The writings, ceremonials, and rituals of many cultures and civilizations attest to such interest in ancient times, but development was not systematically studied until recently. Freud stressed the importance of development in childhood. Jung viewed development as a process which continues throughout life. In the past two decades the developmental tasks of adulthood have been studied by Erikson, Gould, Levinson, and Vaillant, among others.
On the basis of their review of historical and transcultural accounts of attitudes toward adulthood, their examination of recent studies on the subject by others, and their own observations, the authors offer several hypotheses about developmental issues in adulthood. They postulate that development is a dynamic process which is ongoing throughout life, i.e., that the same process extends throughout childhood and adulthood. Adult development, they indicate, is focused on the evolution and alteration of existing psychic structures. Physical, physiological, and psychological events that occur during adulthood influence the course of adult development. The authors warn against reductionistic interpretations of adult behavior that depict it as only a manifestation of infantile experience or as only a response to current happenings. They stress a dynamic interaction between current experience and existing psychic structures which are the result of preceding development.
While acknowledging that there is a problem of definition, they