ABSTRACT
The roots of the concept of psychological development lie within the Christian intellectual tradition. Since the early Christian fathers, personhood has come to be seen as a permanent interiority structured by linear time and oriented towards a unitary goal: at first redemption, latterly cognitive normality and emotional maturity (considering the modern formal discipline of psychology as an extension of the religious outlook). From the late sixteenth century onwards, the concept of predestined election became prominent in debates about human nature; over a period beginning with Pascal, a residual concept of election can be detected even in Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau, since it was the model for change to be interpreted as a stadial development with quasi-secular descriptors. At the same time, a whole theoretical framework for the concept of development was being elaborated by writers such as Malebranche, Leibniz and Bonnet. This was the climate in which Condillac, however silent he was on such topics, wrote about human psychology.
