Developing Minds: Challenge and Continuity Across the Life Span

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.

Michael Rutter, M.D., F.R.S. is professor of child psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry (U.K.) and honorary directory of the Medical Research Child Psychiatry Unit. He is also the author of Helping Troubled Children and Maternal Deprivation Reassessed.Marjorie Rutter, S.R.N., is a clinical nurse specialist and postgraduate teacher in family planning, infertility, and psychosexual counseling in London.