ABSTRACT
Conceptualizing human development as starting with a blank slate on which experience writes the story of a person is a metaphor from John Locke for explaining much about human behavior. However, without conceding that Steven Pinker (Blackburn, 2002) has expunged Locke’s slate, we believe a more complete understanding can be obtained by understanding the properties of the slate itself, and then getting on with the task of choreographing the dances of developmental psychopathology. After all, nothing can be “written” without acknowledging the slate’s existence. We must then ask: Will the slate take the chalk (or chisel) well? Is the slate durable or will it crumble? Is the slate protected from the elements or will the story wash away with the next rain? For human stories, the slate is the brain (Nelson & Gottesman, 2005). Weighing in at about three pounds, the adult brain, like other organs, is the product of evolution. Hopefully, over the course of a person’s life, the stories on the slate will not be prematurely wiped away by defects in the slate (dementing illness) or unfortunate experiences (head injury, abusing alcohol). Because of our interest in the slate itself, we choose a different metaphor.
