Stage 1: Womb – 12 months• Motor Functions and security
Stage 2: 6 months – 2 years old• Mobility and emotion
Stage 3: 18 months – 4 years old• Will and action
Stage 4: 4 – 7 years old• Social Identity
Stage 5: 7 – 12 years old• Social contract
Stage 6: Adolescence• Reconstitution
Stage 7: Early Adulthood and Beyond• Self-knowledge
Stage 7: Self-knowledge
Transpersonal Psychology: The movement of self from exclusively individual identities (unique and single organisms) toward a universal commonality.
• Individuality is transformed and absorbed into the Universal.
• Individual personality is seen as part of a unified and integrated whole
Adult Development• Development will only occur with
conscious intent.• Many people will stay in programmed
instinctual patterns (dependency, powerlessness)
• Adult may never discover their potential as it involves challenge and anxiety
• Potentially adults go through a similar set of developmental stages
Adult Development
• Developmental stages are not the same for everyone and are rarely experienced in the same order.
• Unresolved childhood conflict may arrest adult development
• Assessment is through understanding of the whole person (rather than isolation of particular incidents).
Adult Development
1. Survival, place to live, caring for oneself, independent income, self-sufficiency2. Sexual relationships – awareness of other becomes more acute, partnership may be of primary importance. Emotional frustration may be projected onto partner which may sabotage early relationships
Adult Development3. Individuality under our own power and will. Separation from having to conform to expectations of culture, family, etc.
• Dependency, powerlessness, obedience creation of our own path
• Relationships defined by needs of the other, Enslavement in meaningless jobs personal career, skill-building, sense of control, affinity with others in political or psychological groupings
• Power over others Power with others
Adult Development4. Individuation: Re-evaluation of
behaviour towards others• Empathy and altruism, substantial
relationships• Emphasis on family dynamics• Balance between inner masculine and feminine
5. Creativity: Contribution to community (e.g. midlife)
• Creating a business, writing a book/thesis, building a house, pursuing artistic hobby, public service
Adult Development6. Reflection and study of patterns of behaviour (e.g. children are grown)
• Introversion and exploration of mythology, philosophy
• Travelling or renewal of past study
7. Wisdom and teaching. May involve leaving previous lifestyle or dropping material possessions
Developmental Stages: Summary
Stage 1: Motor Functions• Foundation of security that enables self-
preservation and forms the physical identity
Stage 2: Emotions• Emotional identity interested in self-
gratification
Stage 3: Language• Ego identity develops inner authority
and freedom
Developmental Stages: SummaryStage 4: Social relationships
• Social Identity formed to establish wider relationship models and self-acceptance
Stage 5: Creativity• Career/Self expression forms creative identity
Stage 6: Self-reflection• Archetypal identity ascends from egoic
personality
Stage 7: Knowledge• Self-knowledge forms a universal identity,
learning and teaching
Stage 8: Adult Development
Nature and Nurture
How are individuals different?
• Naturally occurring differences reveal the structure of psychological function
• Organisms may only differ in the efficency of specific mechanisms and the frequency of use of different mechanisms
Environment
What is environment?Non-genetic influencesAll non-heritable factors including any
pre/post-natal illnesses and biological events
• Shared and non-shared environments• Family• Peers• Individual life events• Chance
Quantitative Genetics
History• Francis Galton (1822-1911)Founder of psychometrics (measuring
mental faculties)Pioneer of eugenics, evolution,
fingerprintingHeredity is the passing of traits to
offspring (from its parent or ancestors)
Quantitative Genetics
Merriman (1924) – First twin studies• Monozygotic (identical, MZ) twins
share 100% of genes• Dizygotic (fraternal, DZ) twins
share 50% of genesNazi war crimes associated with
eugenicsEmergence of behaviourism
genetic research blocked
Genetics
Watson & Crick (1953): Deoxyribonucleic acid (1966): Guanine, Thymine, Cytosine, Adonine
Creates 3 letter wordsCodes 20 amino acids
Amino acids build proteins
Human Genome Project (2001)Sequence of 3 billion letters
Quantitative Genetics
Identifying specific DNA sequences responsible for genetic influence on common behavioural disorders, such as mental illnessStudies complex behavioural dimensions such as personality
Quantitative Genetics
• Many DNA variants of small effect size
• QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci)QTL set – multiple QTLs in a set can be used as a genetic risk index (like environmental risk index)
Twin and Adoption studiesShows genetic influence in nearly every area of behaviour that has been studied
• Mental Illness• Personality & Intelligence• Self-esteem• Interest• Attitudes• School achievement• Drug use and abuse• Physical abuse
Genetics in Culture90% of parents and teachers reported genetics as being at least as important as the environment for mental illness, personality, learning difficulties and intelligenceConcordance: The presence of the same trait in both members of a pair of twins
Schizophrenia: • Until 1960s, believed to be environmental• Twin studies showed 45% concordance for
schiz• DZ twins show 17% concordance
Adoption studies
1. Comparison of Monozygotic twins reared in different environments studies how alike the children become through development and into adulthood
2. Genetically unrelated children growing up in an adoptive family scarcely resemble each other for personality, psychopathology and cognitive abilities after adolescence
3. Risk of schizophrenia is just as great when children are adopted away from their schizophrenic parents at birth as when they are reared by them
Twin & Adoption studies
Genetic influences
Shared environment (makes siblings similar)
Nonshared environment
Non-shared environment
The most effective environmental influences are those that make children in the same family different, not similar
So how does the environment work to influence behaviour?
The Nature of NurtureGenotype-environment Correlation:
Differential exposure to experience
Genotype-environment Interaction:Differential sensitivity to experience
Genotype: Genetic constitutionPhenotype: Observable characteristics
e.g. physiological properties, development, behaviour, environmental variation and epigenetic factors
Nature of NurtureEpigenetics: Changes in phenotype or gene expression caused by non-genetic influences
Environment can be considered as an extended phenotype
e.g. differences in parenting could be the genetic result of child psychopathology, rather than the cause
Extended PhenotypeGenetic factors substantially influence how we measure environments such as parenting, stress or social support
The environment represents a direct response to genetically influenced characteristics
Individuals select, modify and construct (in memory) their own experience of the world
Developmental Change and Continuity
Genetic effects at one age differ from genetic effects at another age
• Behavioural markers for schizophrenia are difficult to find in children who later become schizophrenic
• Genes may only express hallucinatory or paranoid effects after adolescent brain development enables highly symbolic processing
Developmental Change and Continuity
Magnitude of Genetic influence on general cognitive ability (intelligence) increases steadily from infancy to adulthood
A) more genes may come into play during developmentB) Same genes have greater effects
Multivariate Heterogeneity and Comorbidity
Heterogeneity: multiple origins causing the same disorder in different individuals Comorbidity: the effect of all other diseases a person might have other than the primary diagnosis
Genetic overlap across learning, language, reading and mathematics disabilitiesSame genes largely effect verbal, spatial and memory abilities
Multivariate Heterogeneity and Comorbidity
Correlation between traits is considered above individual traits
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)• Diagnosis requires deficits in both social and
non-social behaviours• Different genes affect social and non-social
traits• Multivariate genetic analysis will change
diagnosis and also treatment and prevention
Phenotypic behaviour does change brain structure and function (stimulating environments)
Genes do change behaviour
Behaviour does not change genes
Behavioural Genetics
Rare single-gene disorders are treatable by gene identification
Complex traits (multi-gene + multi-environment) are influenced by many genes with small effect size
The Postgenomic Era
QTL sets are being identified to account for a useful proportion of variance in complex behaviour
This will force reorganisation of diagnosis, education, legal systems and hospitals