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.
Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated some of the greatest works of children's literature of the 20th century, has said that he was obsessed with one and only one question: “How do children survive?” Another form of the question, “How does a child make it to adulthood?,” is addressed in the fascinating article by Frans Stortelder and Marian Ploegmakers-Burg, “Adolescence and the Reorganization of Infant Development: A Neuro-Psychoanalytic Model,” that was published in this journal in 2010.
The article outlined the ground that must be covered on the journey from birth to adulthood (from birth to say 21, 22, 23 years of age). The article then went on to show what the voyager—that is to say the infant, the child, the adolescent—must do in order to cross that frontier. The authors accomplished this daunting task not so much by using a psychoanalytic synthesis, but rather by using a frame that includes both the biological and psychical changes that progress as the voyage moves on. It is a fascinating exploration, a fascinating study of the biopsychical.
By incorporating the developmental literature of biology and psychology, the authors show how the changing needs of the infant, the child, the adolescent develop the one from the other. “Changes in brain structure and function go together.” To understand the mind, one must understand the brain. To understand the adolescent, one must understand the child. Both the mind and the brain are developmental—ontogenetic, within the organism's own lifetime. There is growth. There are needs. There is change. There are no separations. There is one constant path.