ABSTRACT
The nature of psychological change has always been controversial, both within groups of psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists, and between them. Disputes have often been framed in terms of causality – what causes psychological development and its defects? An alternative framework, which will be the focus of this chapter, is to consider where psychological change occurs. Is psychological development to be described, for example, in terms of changes in a young person’s observable behaviour, or in terms of the unconscious processes or ‘dramas’ imputed to be associated with these behaviours? Alternatively, is development to be viewed as a family event in which all generations participate and all actually change, or is it to be seen as a socio-cultural event in which the changes differ markedly depending on the cultural context?
