Development

social and emotional development, particularly as it occurs in the human infant… well before the advent of language the baby’s capacities to interact with the social and physical environments… are extremely complex and sophisticated.

Schore argues that emotional development, grounded in pre-linguistic psychobiological mechanisms maturing in early infancy, forms the keystone of all subsequent human psychological life.

Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis

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specific critical conditions or stimuli are necessary for development and can influence development only during that period… rapidly growing tissues or systems are particularly sensitive to changes in the amounts and types of environmental stimulation.

Schore establishes the critical-period concept as the neurobiological mechanism by which environmental quality permanently shapes developmental trajectories of late-maturing control systems.

Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis

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the continuous, though often fitful, development of consciousness over the last ten thousand years… the archetypal stages of conscious evolution are in force… creative individuals possessed of a stronger consciousness are even branded by the collective as antisocial.

Neumann situates individual psychological development within a collective evolutionary narrative, arguing that archetypal stages of conscious growth have served as the normative ideal in Western culture and that creative individuation remains perpetually at risk from collective regression.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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a full lifespan developmental schema divided into two major parts: the first half of life, which has to do with physical maturation and social adaptation; and the second half, which is governed by spiritual and cultural development and aims.

Stein synthesises Jung and Erikson to propose a bipartite lifespan developmental schema in which the first half is oriented toward ego formation and social adaptation, and the second toward spiritually governed individuation.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis

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any backward looking is un-Jungian because, for Jung, the ‘whence’ is less essential than the ‘whither’… Hillman’s statement that the child functions as a screen on to which the developmental psychologist ‘may freely propound [his] fantasies without contradiction’.

Samuels exposes the central epistemological fault-line within post-Jungian thought, reporting Giegerich’s and Hillman’s critique that developmental theory is a retrospective projection rather than a legitimate psychological truth.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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The major developmental project in the first half of life is ego and persona development to the point of individual viability, cultural adaptation, and adult responsibility for raising children.

Stein identifies ego-and-persona formation as the defining developmental task of life’s first half, grounded in archetypal potentials and typological tendencies that orient the individual toward social viability.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis

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development of social behavior can be understood only in terms of a continuing dialectic between an active and changing organism and an active and changing environment… adaptation is a balance between stability and change.

Schore frames social-emotional development as a dynamic dialectic between organism and environment across infancy, in which successful stage-wise transitions depend on coordinated readjustments at each ontogenetic boundary.

Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis

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the senex, the wise old man, the archetype of meaning, is there at the beginning ‘as are all archetypal dominants’… development is generated

Samuels shows that even Hillman’s archetypal approach implies a developmental logic, in that archetypes are present as potentials awaiting appropriate environmental stimulus for incarnation across the lifespan.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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As the intellectual basis of the differences between these two writers is their dissimilar approach to infancy and childhood… both Fordham and Neumann have written far more widely than this concentration on early development might indicate.

Samuels frames the Fordham-Neumann debate as hinging on contrasting epistemologies of early development — empirical observation versus empathic reconstruction — illuminating the methodological stakes of developmental theory within analytical psychology.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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In the early stages of development, one could imagine a thousand possible outcomes. Only in retrospect can one see the full imago that previously was hidden in shadow.

Stein argues that early developmental stages contain only probabilistic prefigurations of later character structures, with the definitive imago becoming legible only through retrospective analysis.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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Maturation dependent on facilitating environment… Maturational development and environmental provision… Maturational processes and emotional development.

Winnicott’s index entries establish the foundational Winnicottian thesis that maturational development — including emotional development and the emergence of the self — is structurally dependent upon the quality of environmental provision.

Winnicott, Donald, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting

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whether social achievement is always a product of one-sided development… what is crucial is the person’s attitude to his career, marriage, and so on. And here the most vital factor will be early development.

Samuels interrogates Jung’s lifespan schema, arguing that the pathological potential of first-half achievement depends not on outward success per se but on the quality of early developmental experience underlying the individual’s orientation to life.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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The mature personality and the deeper, archetypally based identity will not form… The shift in body image and chemistry is part of the whole life plan, not an increasing deficiency to be remedied artificially.

Stein argues that authentic adult development requires surrendering the puer/puella stance and undergoing genuine transformation, which the body’s biological changes both signal and demand.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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the developmental phases are in essence constructs… Although the research shows persuasively… that group development occurs, the evidence is less clear on whether there is a precise, inviolate sequence of development.

Yalom cautions against reifying group developmental stages, emphasising that while group development is empirically attested, its sequencing is neither linear nor irreversible, and phase boundaries remain permeable.

Yalom, Irvin D., The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008supporting

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a model such as this also permits us to postulate regression as well as progression along a spectrum… the phase of exploration of the body as connected to the formation of a skin boundary.

Samuels articulates a developmental spectrum model in which early somatic phases foreshadow later psychosexual organisation, allowing both progressive and regressive movement and connecting body-boundary formation to ego development.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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the continued maintenance and development of perception depends on experience, understood as the exercise of perceptual mechanisms… justified by both developmental and neurological studies.

Gallagher integrates developmental and neurological evidence to show that while perception is organised from birth, its ongoing development requires active exercise of perceptual mechanisms through embodied experience.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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early life experiences… altered plasma levels of ACTH and corticosterone secretion. These hormonal responses modulate the functioning of the HPA axis in ways that, if continued, may increase the risk of immune disorders and heighten sensitivity to future stress.

Lanius presents neuroendocrinological evidence that stress during critical early developmental periods produces lasting dysregulation of the HPA axis, with cascading effects on immune function, affect regulation, and cognitive development.

Lanius, edited by Ruth A, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010supporting

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As midlife and middle age set in, the physical changes and developments that occur are often unwelcome and may cause considerable anxiety… Physical growth and decay are governed importantly by gen

Stein traces the arc of physical development from maturation through midlife decline, framing bodily change as an inescapable developmental context that provokes psychological reckoning with mortality.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting

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The body plan is formed during the course of early development… These body plans and stages have been highly conserved in evolution, having persisted for 530 million years; at the same time there has been considerable diversification at the pre- and postphylotypic stages.

Thompson situates individual development within deep evolutionary time, showing that phylotypic body-plan stages constrain yet also enable the diversification that makes complex psychological life possible.

Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting

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are we to see a small child as an extension of the psychology of its parents or as being recognisable as itself?… children have no psychology of their own, in the literal sense.

Samuels exposes Jung’s self-contradiction on child psychology, highlighting a foundational ambiguity in Jungian developmental theory about whether the child constitutes an autonomous psychological subject or is subsumed within the parental psychic field.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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kittens that were moved around passively, not actively exploring their environment, were unable later to use sight to guide their movements… This deficit was sw

Levine draws on Held and Hein’s kitten experiments to demonstrate that active motor engagement with the environment is a necessary condition for normal sensorimotor development, underscoring the embodied basis of developmental competence.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting

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While in the midst of self-development, if one wants to develop others before one’s own development is sufficient, one will be of no benefit to others, and will harm oneself first.

Liu I-ming’s Taoist commentary articulates a principle of developmental sequencing in which self-cultivation must precede the capacity to cultivate others, offering an Eastern analogue to the depth-psychological insistence on inner work prior to relational intervention.

Liu I-ming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986aside

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The aristocracy must inspire Messianic hope but at the same time confidence that the pairing-group leader, if he materializes, will be born in a palace but be just like ours… demand development.

Bion identifies the aristocratic sub-group function within the pairing basic assumption as one that sustains Messianic hope precisely by forestalling any actual development, revealing how group dynamics can be organised around the evasion of developmental demand.

Bion, W.R., Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, 1959aside

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