You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Tyson and Tyson have attempted the Herculean task of presenting and integrating the many developmental theories which confront us today. Their labor has extended over a long period of years during which time some of these theories have emerged, met strong opposition, evolved, and have been incorporated into the general flow. Hence this labor has been much like coursing a canoe through a rapidly moving stream which suddenly comes upon rapids and eddies which must be read and negotiated and cannot be ignored. They are a most likely pair to be doing this job, having been at the Anna Freud Center, and both are training and supervising analysts in the San Diego Institute. They are experienced in both child and adult analysis.
Robert Wallerstein, in his Foreword, while giving high praise for this work states his caveat:
…our common ground cannot be reached at this time within our general theories. I feel that our metapsychologies in their current state of historical development, in the looseness of their articulation with the observable and the empirically testable clinical phenomena of our consulting rooms, are beyond the reach of scientific study and therefore still only scientific metaphor, albeit perhaps heuristically useful ones. (p. xi)
The authors, however, recognize that although analysts were initially concerned almost exclusively with the development of the instinctual drives and the Oedipus complex, various alternative theories have been conceptualized in an effort to understand human development. Some of these theories have given central significance to one or another aspect of development, to the exclusion of a more comprehensive view. The Tysons state, “An integrated framework reduces the danger of simplistic reductionism or unwarranted inferences regarding the effects of early experiences on subsequent pathology” (p. 3). They continue: