ABSTRACT
Most cultures throughout history demarcate the stages of life, their boundaries, dimensions and divisions. There are cultural differences in what it means to be a fully developed person, the processes through which development occurs, and the significant tasks and marker events in life. This is evident in contemporary Western society with its conception of the life course having distinct phases or stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. This structuring of the ‘normal’ life course is accompanied by a set of expectations about the proper progression of events and transition points throughout our lives. Many developmental psychologists construe the end point of development with terms like ‘individuality’, ‘autonomy’ and the ‘integrated self’. The role of educational and therapeutic intervention is to explore different ways of viewing the world and different internal models to guide action, that is, to construct a new ‘replacement’ narrative which is more functional and adaptive for the person concerned.
