ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis, from its beginnings, has been deeply interested in human development and has expressed its interest through varying theoretical frames. An interest in psychopathologies of development gradually gave way to attempts to understand the whole of human development as a process. However, its interest, until recent decades has been psychological without being neurobiological, a form of original sin. Other failures have included an implicit position that evolution takes place over such lengthy time scales that it cannot be of clinical interest to us and that genetics also has little to offer. Once again, developmental science has left us behind. A new science, Evo-Devo, has come into being. The term combines evolution with development. It replaces the old idea that ontology recapitulates phylogeny with a newer concept; evolution and development are interreferential, cannot truly be spoken of independently, and can only be thought of as components of Evo-Devo. Two related areas of study, genetics and epigenetics, are also necessary for an understanding of the human condition and, most strikingly, these processes have psychological as well as biological effects on the development of the young human.
