ABSTRACT
The way in which we handle our basic drives begins to be determined in infancy by the response of mother, or mother substitutes, and subsequently by significant others (father, siblings, teachers, etc.). In the last two decades important observational studies have been conducted on infant development, which emphasize the importance of mutual attunement and reciprocity between mother and infant (Stern 1985, Emde 1988, Gergely and Watson 1996). Stages in development extend through and beyond infancy, and have been conceptualized in many different ways, but the concept of successive phases, each needing to be negotiated at the appropriate and critical time to allow satisfactory progression to later phases, is widely held. Shakespeare wrote of the seven ages of man long before anyone in a more scientific field of psychology attempted their own classifications. The very existence within psychiatry of different areas of specialization dealing with childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, testifies to the existence of different problems at different ages. The idea of different phases, proceeding from simple to more complex as maturation and learning progress, is somewhat analogous to the idea of different neurological levels building up from simple to complex. As earlier stages or levels are negotiated, they may be left behind or incorporated into later patterns, but there remains the potentiality of reversal or regression to more primitive levels in psychology, as in
neurology, especially when difficulties of an earlier phase were not fully resolved.
