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Nemiroff and Colarusso have taken the developmental viewpoint and expanded its purview to include adulthood. In this, their third book on adult development, they continue exploring ideas originally presented in 19811 and elaborated upon in 1985.2 In doing so, they offer us a theoretical framework in which to grapple with the issues of the aging adult. They expand the concept of development
to include the evolution as well as the formation and fixation of psychic structure. They expand the genetic viewpoint to include the influences of adulthood, and they include as tasks of adulthood: intimacy, creativity, work, and coping with loss. They also note the avoidance of treating older adults; the need for an expanded diagnostic process; the need for a developmental history to include developmental tasks, lines, and arrests of adulthood; and the need to be aware of transference and countertransference reactions emanating from adult experiences.
They begin with Spitz's 1965 definition of development: "the emergence of forms, of function, and of behavior which are the outcome of exchanges between the organism on the one hand, and inner and outer environment on the other" (p. 98). The lifelong interaction between biology, the psyche, and the environment resulting in development over the life course is the focus and the basis from which the editors derive their seven hypotheses of the psychodynamic theory of adult development:
1The nature of the developmental process is basically the same in the adult as in the child. The adult is as dependent on the environment as the child.
2Development in