Review of THE DYNAMICS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Reviews the book, The Dynamics of Psychological Development by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (1980). The authors have provided us with an outline of their view of child development. The range of their own clinical and research experience as well as their scholarly integration of developmental theory and data is impressive. Central to their framework is an emphasis on the unique adaptive function of the human brain and its extraordinary potential for plasticity and alternative developmental pathways. The value of such a framework can be judged in several ways. There is, first of all, the immediate appeal of a new perspective on a complex set of experiences like psychological development. The concept of the goodness of fit between the organism and the demands and support of the environment is helpful. It could well lead to the more accurate formulation of certain developmental research questions. Still another way to judge a theoretical framework is to ask: Does it generate fruitful hypotheses and those research strategies which then either do or do not lend support to these hypotheses? From their experience, what specific problem do the authors feel need further research and how would they pursue such research? As they stress, concepts of linear unidirectional continuity or change are insufficient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)