Developing Minds: Challenge And Continuity Across The Lifespan

by Michael Rutter, Marjorie Rutter

Most models of human development end abruptly with adolescence. But, according to the internationally renowned theorist and researcher Michael Rutter, we continue to mature throughout our life span. In this volume, Michael Rutter and Marjorie Rutter chart out in nontechnical language a comprehensive and vivid map of human growth from cradle to grave.Arguing that there are discontinuities as well as continuities to the growth process, they trace how basic aspects of psychological functioning (such as emotion and cognition) change over the course of life. The volume is organized around themes—anger and aggression, social relationships, intelligence and language—rather than specific age periods. Thus we see the parallels between life crises and challenges at different times of life (such as adolescence and old age). This original approach also reveals the full significance of both resilient and maladaptive responses to stress and adversity.The authors thoroughly mine decades of developmental research to transmute findings into brilliant nuggets of clinical wisdom. Covering all factors—genetic, social, historical, cognitive, biological—that shape human development, this pioneering book explores and explains not only the universal aspects of maturation but also how we each end up on our individual paths.

Genres: Psychology, Education, Nonfiction

432 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Professor Sir Michael Rutter is the first consultant of child psychiatry in the United Kingdom. He has been described as the "father of child psychology". Currently he is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London and consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, a post he has held since 1966.