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The aim of this paper is to suggest new ways of understanding development that offer new therapeutic possibilities. I use observational and interview data showing the development of one research subject over forty years to highlight that the concepts of continuity and discontinuity need to be considered together to grasp the full complexity of psychological development. In the subject an unanticipated transformation occurs at age 14, the emergence of a perversion, which fades by age 28. I will show that the observations can be best understood by co-ordinating the influence of
I would like to dedicate this paper to the late Dr. John McDevitt, who gathered so much of this data and who contributed greatly to my thinking. I want to thank Dr. Sam Abrams for his extremely helpful comments and contributions to this paper. I want to thank the members of the Psychoanalytic and Development Fund Study Group: Claudia Lament, Rona Knight, Lissa Weinstein and Ellen Shustorovich for their very thoughtful comments.
The material for this paper has been gathered over 40 years. The Separation-Individuation Study, with Dr. Margaret Mahler, Co-Principal Investigator, and Dr. John McDevitt, Co-Principal Investigator, gathered material that covered the first three years of life; the follow-up at ages 3-5 was by the same research team; At age 10 Dr. Louise Kaplan did the psychological testing and Dr. John McDevitt the clinical interviews; at age 27 Dr. Wendy Olesker did the psychological testing and Dr. John McDevitt did the follow-up interviews over a two-year period. At age 37 Dr. Inga Blom gathered the material for the Adult Attachment Interview. How the material was put together is solely my responsibility.
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 65, ed. Robert A. King, Samuel Abrams, A. Scott Dowling, and Paul M. Brinich (Yale University Press, copyright © 2011 by Robert A. King, Samuel Abrams, A. Scott Dowling, and Paul M. Brinich).
antecedents that exert a pull backward with the transformative potential arising from the pull forward into new structures, compromises, and organizations.