ABSTRACT
This chapter provides more integrative approaches to understanding child and adolescent development and also it explain the number of theoretical approaches with claims to holism. Which include family therapy and biopsychosocial theories, dynamic systems theory, evolutionary developmental psychology, lifespan psychology and relationalism. Finally, it explains the efforts that have been made to bring together different schools of thought, including considering whether a rapprochement is possible between positivism and postmodernism. The implication is that developmental theories at a purely psychological level of analysis will necessarily be incomplete. As Richard Lerner observed in contemporary developmental theories, the person is not biologized, psychologized or sociologized. Rather the individual is systemized that is his or her development is embedded within an integrated matrix of variables derived from multiple levels of organization and development is conceptualized as deriving from the dynamic relations among the variables in this multi-tiered matrix. As with postmodernism, the newer approaches certainly present significant challenges for traditional scientific methods.
