Pyschology- Continuity and Discontinuity in life

In this module, we take up the less obvious, but no less important, issue of continuity vs. discontinuity in human development. Is human development an unbroken linear process of growth and "progress" through the normal ages and stages of human life? Or, are individual human lives best characterized as unique and unpredictable stories, full of twists, turns, and transformations? 

Readings

· Cook, W. & Herzman, R. St. Augustine, The Confessions. The Teaching Company. Course #6627. Lectures 13-24.

· Claverley, J. & Philips, D.C. (1986). Reread Ch. 6 "The Ages of Man: From Genesis to Piaget"

· Tolstoy, Leo. (1886). The Death of Ivan Ilych. Link: http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/tolstoydeath.html

or try: http://www.classicallibrary.org/tolstoy/ivan/index.htm

· Freud, S. Introductory Lectures, Lecture XX. Link: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/honors130/freud3.html

· M7 - Historical Antecedents I - Continuity

· The child is father to the man -- William Wordsworth

· One of the most powerful aspects of scientific theories is that they allow the prediction of future events based on the collection and interpretation of current data. For example, before the invention of the microscope and the discovery of microbes in the 17th and 18th centuries, many diseases and infections were regarded as unpredictable and mysterious afflictions that killed millions arbitrarily. The discovery of bacteria and other micro-organisms and the identification of their causal role in infection and disease represented a major breakthrough in modern medical science that enabled the prediction and prevention of many illnesses through such simple measures as the sterilization of surgical instruments with heat and the avoidance of contaminated water. This new model of scientific Investigation based on observation, formulation of hypotheses, experimental testing, and finally prediction and the possibility of some degree of control through evidence based intervention promised a powerful new approach to the study of human development and behavior. The role of the microscope in the new medical science is noteworthy. It contributed a crucial new element to the thinking of those scholars who turned their attention to the development of human beings. For just as the actual cause of disease was found to be beyond direct observation, and thus hidden, so too did the new developmentalists come to assume the existence of hidden or inner mechanisms and processes responsible for the appearance of various traits and behaviors and their developmental unfolding.

The first Mozart effect publication showed participants spatial intelligence scores improved by 8-9 points, by far the largest increase reported in literature. A meta-analysis of Mozart effect research showed an increase of 1.4 general IQ points between participants listening to Mozart or silence (Chabris 1999). This have led some to suggest playing Mozart to unborn children in utero.

· The child study movement in the 19th century expressed this new belief that careful observation and data collection might lead to such an understanding of the "inner" or "hidden" logic of human growth and maturation. While pre-industrial Western adults seem to have regarded children as little adults and attached little importance to their early behaviors and formative experiences, a new belief emerged in the predictive significance of early child behavior and power of early experiences to affect and even to determine all subsequent development. Rousseau's writings had already provided a cautionary tale about how ignorance of the natural child could lead to ruinous adult outcomes through society's ignorant bungling of parenting, education, and socialization. At first, the approach of the new child development scholars was mostly descriptive, focusing on observable patterns of physical growth and mental development. Soon, however, ambitious investigators became concerned with the identification of predictable patterns of growth and behavior that might define a sequence of distinct developmental stages. A corollary assumption was that each stage built on and therefore required the successful completion of each previous stage. Knowledge of the inner logic each stage might, in turn, allow the prediction of subsequent stages. It was also assumed that the very earliest stages of child development would, for better or worse, have a decisive impact on all subsequent development and on the shape of adult personality, functioning, and behavior as expressed in the folk saying "as the twig is bent, so grows the branch". The persistence of this belief in the decisive impact of early experience can be seen in the commonly held view among today's middle class parents that they will provide their kids with a developmental "jump start" by exposing their infants to various stimuli and activities in the crib and even playing Mozart to their unborn children in utero! These parents are often convinced that to do less might be to seriously handicap their children's future lives and opportunities.

· M7 - Contemporary Expressions I - Continuity

· Two theorists who clearly exemplified this belief in continuity are Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget. Freud's theory of psychosexual development provided a detailed and elaborate account of how early sexual and aggressive drives interacted with early experiences to result in either healthy adult adjustment or a lifetime of "neurosis". In Freud's scheme, individuals could become "fixated" at the earliest stages of development in ways that would continue to affect their adult personalities. For example, an individual who was frustrated and therefore fixated at the oral stage would thereafter exhibit an "oral personality" which included passive, dependent behavior. Similar developmental derailments could occur at any of the subsequent psychosexual stages leading variously to "anal retentive" character traits or, later, to an "Oedipus Complex". Freud's lecture XX (assigned in the reading for this module) provides an brief overview of some of these ideas. Even though Freud's standing has fallen in recent years, his ideas have had a profound impact on Western culture, particularly his idea that adult personality is significantly formed in early childhood and that the "root causes" of many adult problems must therefore be sought and therapeutically "uncovered" in childhood experience. In their chapter on Freud (Chapter 5, "The Loss of Innocence"), Claverley and Phillips cite the psychologist Jerome Bruner's contention that Freud established continuities in five areas which had previously been regardedas discontinuous:

Oedipus Cursing his Son by Henry Fuseli (1786)

· 1) the continuity of the physical and mental, both connected and subject to scientific investigation and explanation;

· 2) the continuity between the primitive and infantile and the civilized and mature;

· 3) the continuity between the child and the adult as expressed in his theory of psychosexual development;

· 4) the continuity between the irrational and unconscious and the rational and conscious;

· 5) and lastly, the continuity of mental health and mental illness (p.55-66).

· Meanwhile, Jean Piaget effected a revolution in the study of human development with his theory of cognitive development through an invariant sequence of stages from the sensorimotor stages of infancy to the formal operational stage achieved in adolescence. Unlike Freud, Piaget had little interest in psychopathology. Instead, he was concerned with the normal development of modes of intellectual growth and understanding in children. In the tradition of the early child study movement, Piaget developed his theory through close systematic observation and interaction with his own children. Piaget viewed the child as a budding scientist and philosopher whose understanding of both the natural and human environment evolved through dialectical and predictable processes of accomodation and assimilation. But, like Freud's, his theory shared the assumption that each stage of development required the successful completion of each previous stage and represented a sudden qualitative reorganization of cognitive functioning based on slow incremental processes of cognitive mastery and growth. Since each stage must be mastered to allow a successful transition into the next, Piaget's theory has also assumed the importance of early development as the necessary foundation for further development. Programs such as Headstart and preschool programs that stress the cultivation of early cognitive skills reflect this post-Piagetian climate of opinion.

· M7 - Historical Antecedents II - Discontinuity

· Like the blank slate, the notion of continuity is so deeply engrained in contemporary views of Human Development that it is often simply assumed. Although it's roots can be found in Aristotle and other Western thinkers, it remains a distinctly modern idea. Before the modern era, however, the prevailing view of human lives was religious rather than scientific. Augustine's Confessions provided a vivid and compelling expression of this religious, Western perspective on the basic course and meaning of human life -- a "master narrative" of its important themes and issues. According to this master narrative, human beings enter the world with both the burden of original sin and the freedom and responsibility of free will. Childhood is seen as a brief and rather inconsequential prelude to the spiritual and moral drama of adult life. Childhood is viewed as inconsequential because the child is regarded as an underdeveloped and incomplete adult waiting to grow up and take his or her place in the world. The outcome of interest in this story is not so much the fulfillment of the individual's "human potential", as first glimpsed in early childhood, but in the attainment of spiritual salvation through devotion to God, virtuous living, but finally, through the mystery of God's grace which is beyond human understanding and control.

Heresiarchs, Divine Comedy by Gustave Dore (1885)

· In the remaining twelve taped lectures on Augustine's Confessions, Professors Cook and Herzman focus on Augustine's conversion to Christianity after a long period of inner conflict and questioning. Rather than being seen as a personal achievement or the attainment of some naturally occurring developmental milestone or "stage", Augustine's conversion involves an act of surrender to God's will -- a decision to finally accept and submit to what he already knows to be the truth and thus to stop running away from God's will. Augustine's inner conflict about this is poignantly and amusingly expressed when he prays "Grant me chastity..but not yet"! Of particular importance for our discussion of continuity and discontinuity, this outcome -- i.e. Augustine's conversion -- cannot be confidently predicted from his earlier history. It is not developmentally determined but rather represents an act of free will -- a personal decision, freely chosen, that will profoundly change the direction of his life. Rather than being a continuation and extension of previous development, Augustine's conversion also represents an act of repentance, which in the original Greek, literally means turning aroundor going in the opposite direction. Before Augustine, the most famous example of such a radical, abrupt turn-around and change of heart in the Christian tradition is the story of Saul of Tarsus sudden conversion on the famous "road to Damascus" as told in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. In this dramatic story, Saul, who has been previously involved in persecuting Christians, is suddenly blinded by a bolt of light. His sight returns as the "scales" fall from his eyes and, with transformed vision, he sees the error of his previous ways and now embraces Christianity. Another aspect of this story provides a key element of the Judeo-Christian view of human life: life a journey, a road with many possible twists, turns, and possible dead-ends as the traveler or "pilgrim" seeks the other-worldly destination of the Kingdom of God. This idea of human life as a journey fraught with unexpected obstacles and moral and spiritual perils, was later expressed during the Renaissance in Dante Alighieri's (126501321) The Divine Comedy which begins with the famous words: "Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark forest, for the straightforward path had been lost" (Longfellow trns.)

· M7 - Contemporary Expressions II- Discontinuity

· The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact". ~Thomas Henry Huxley  "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis"

Study of a Tree by Adolph von Menzel (circa 1885-1890)

· Jerome Kagan begins his chapter on "Connectedness" in The Nature of the Child with the above quote. As with the blank slate, it has been research and the accumulation of stubborn facts that don't fit the prevailing theory, that has caused Kagan and other academic psychologists to question the previously unquestioned assumption of continuity in human development.

· Most of this evidence has come from longitudinal or "prospective" research in which children are measured and assessed on various behaviors and traits at young age and then followed and reassessed over time. Such research has been found to yield results that are often startlingly different than the more common retrospective research in which present behaviors are connected to past events and experiences through subjects' recollection of the past. It turns out that subjects own assumption of continuity in their development predisposes them to find and disclose such connections even where none may actually exist.

· Prospective research has repeatedly discovered, however, that the past is not always a reliable predictor of future behavior and functioning. Thus, poor family environment, early separation distress and anxious behavior, and behavior problems in school are not always reliable predictors of adult adjustment. Sometimes ugly ducklings really do become swans while those "most likely to succeed" in the High School year book sometimes fare poorly in their subsequent adult lives. In order to understand how this might be so, Kagan looks to biology for possible explanations where he finds abundant evidence that organisms, including human beings, grow according to complex interactions of biology with environmental factors. Unlike the Piagetian notion of an invariant sequence of stages that require completion of each earlier stage or "developmental task", that development may rely more on criticalperiods during which certain traits and abilities emerge on their own regardless of what occurred in the preceding phase. He gives the example of how all children crawl before they walk; but some children may walk at the appropriate age without having crawled at all. Thus certain developmental milestones may occur independently of one another.