A Critical Approach to Human Growth and Development

Paula Nicolson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781350312913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

What does it mean to be human? This critical text from a well-respected author captures and interrogates the many models which have been developed to explore and explain human behaviour. Informed by sociological, psychological and biological perspectives, the book plots the key stages of the life course from childhood through to older age.

part II

THE LIFESPAN: A MATERIAL-DISCURSIVE-INTRA-PSYCHIC APPROACH

In Part II I focus on theories from the MDI perspective which are appropriate to understanding the lifespan from infancy to old age. Each chapter begins with a description of the developmental psychosocial ‘tasks’, based on the psychosocial developmental stages identified by Erikson, and continues with the MDI contexts within which these tasks are conducted. At the end of the chapter, there is an analysis of at least one case example using a reflective-relational approach drawing upon these theories and providing a backdrop to practice.

All the cases will be taken from real-life examples. Some of these relate to people I have worked with or cases I have supervised. These have all been anonymized and are sometimes presented as composites. Other examples will be drawn from documents of inquiries where a case has been subjected to public scrutiny.

For each chapter, as before, three learning objectives are identified and reviewed to suggest key points that the reader might have taken up from the text.

chapter 7

INFANCY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD: THE IMPORTANCE OF SECURITY AND TRUST

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• To become familiar with the psychosocial lifespan tasks of infancy and early childhood.

• To explore the ways in which the development of attachment relationships is connected to HGD at this stage.

• To consider how the MDI theories presented might be applied to a reflective-relational consideration of real-life case material.

Introduction

In Part I we considered the theoretical background and showed how Erik Erikson’s approach to understanding the lifespan and material, discursive and intra-psychic (MDI) perspectives help us think critically about evidence from research and practice (Chapter 4). Particular emphasis was also placed on theories surrounding attachment relationships and how they interact with the sliding-scale model of lifespan development (Chapters 4 and 5).

Infancy and early childhood, from birth to (roughly) the age of four, represent a critical period of the lifespan throughout all theories of HGD. Even though development and growth take place well beyond infancy and early childhood, across the lifespan until the end of life, patterns established at the start of life continue to exert a powerful impact (Sugarman, 2001). These patterns not only shape our personality, but are the source of our anxieties and influence the types of relationships we have with friends, family, partners and our own children (Bandura, 1973; Klein, 1984; Meltzoff and Decety, 2003; Shechory and Sommerfeld, 2007; Shemmings, 2006). Further, following Chapter 5, attachment relationships at this stage influence brain structures (Schore, 2005). Cognitive neuroscientists also propose that early life experiences shape the configuration of our brains in other ways, for example, in our understanding of moral actions and accountability (Santosuosso and Bottalico, 2009). In this chapter we are going to examine early life with the understanding that the MDI processes impact on everything that follows through the lifespan.

During infancy and early childhood, defined here as birth until about the age of four (preschool), there are opportunities for the individual to gain a feeling of trust or mistrust in themselves and others. This is the beginning of having a sense of your place in the world. This development occurs through the varied everyday experiences that face the developing infant. There are both personal successes and triumphs to be had or shame and doubts which come from experiences of failure.

Examples of ‘successes’ might be the achievement of crawling across the floor so that the infant is ‘rewarded’ for having attained his goal. Failure might be the outcome of not being able to reach or grasp something or dropping a bottle and not being able to pick it up. If you watch a baby you will witness moods of both pleasure and rage, which are likely to be the result of having succeeded or having failed (Bick, 1964; Erikson, 1950/1963).

Psychosocial tasks

Psychosocial tasks at all stages of the lifespan take place in MDI contexts, as I have proposed in Part I. The infant is born into a bio- and socio-material world, he learns to engage his discursive level of consciousness as he develops complex thought abilities, while, from birth, he has the capacity for primitive, and later, complex unconscious activity and emotion.

It is useful now to draw on all of these contexts and ways of thinking and feeling when considering HGD. As you shall see, issues of emotional security (Bowlby, 1988; Holmes, 2010) and the potential for disorganized attachment styles (Shemmings and Shemmings, 2011) correspond to the central struggles in infancy and early childhood. Too great a sense of mistrust and shame and doubt are clearly linked to an insecure and confusing start in life, and you looked at this in more detail in Chapter 4.

In the first stages of life, Erikson proposed that we engage in unconscious and conscious tasks in accord with the physical, social and emotional context. This is the core of what he called psychosocial development, as you saw in Chapter 2.

The first task (in infancy) is about establishing a degree of trust in self, environment and others who inhabit that environment. Failure to achieve this sense of trust results in a greater proportion of mistrust that becomes embedded in that person’s identity. This process occurs during the first year or so of life (Table 4.1, p. 62).

The second task, which as with all the others builds upon what has been achieved earlier, involves gaining a sense of autonomy – a rudimentary foundation for identity – over shame and doubt. This state gains hold over a greater part of the developing self in young children who have been treated cruelly, neglectfully and inconsistently. This dynamic conflict takes place between the ages of (about) one year until three or four years of age.

I now consider these two early phases of the lifespan from an MDI perspective in the context of attachment theory, which complements psychosocial developmental matters at this stage.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

Trust and survival

It is, of course, important to note that we all have some degree of mistrust in ourselves and others, and this is not overall a negative outcome. It enables us to think about and make judgments of others. A capacity for mentalization develops through our growing sense that others may not necessarily put our needs first, but we can survive that experience and negotiate our place in the world. Without such an understanding of failings in ourselves and others we would be unable to communicate effectively, our expectations would be unrealistic and we would set the bar too high.

A child who trusts themselves completely, and without question, will be unable to develop insight into his capacities, strengths and weaknesses, because he will assume he can do everything well. Similarly, a child who trusts everyone around to be on her side, with her interests at the forefront of their minds, will be unable to cope with the ambivalence present in all relationships (Finzi et al., 2001; Shemmings, 2006).

We all need to grasp – consciously and unconsciously – the imperfection in us all. If we aspired to perfection and expected the same of others we would find ourselves unable to live, love and work with others.

A child who has no sense of shame or self-doubt may have a poorly developed sense of empathy and be unable to mentalize, possibly displaying borderline personality characteristics (Fonagy et al., 2003).

A social worker would be similarly unequipped to make judgments in their cases, particularly complex ones. They might consider themselves to be omnipotent and their judgment to be infallible. That, of course, would spell disaster on a number of levels. To be able to operate reflectively and relationally is a consequence of our capacity to cope with uncertainty and the lack of perfection (Mollon, 2006) in self and others (Ruch, 2002).

We need to take these thoughts forward to think about every stage of the lifespan.

The significance of the early months and years

None of us reaches school age without some sense of mistrust, shame and doubt, as you will recall from the discussion of Erikson’s ideas. That is mostly a positive outcome because no-one has the perfect experience of early life. If we did have such a fabled ideal upbringing we would have no resilience to cope with our entry into the imperfect world or to be able to reflect on our own lack of perfection.

As part of the process of striving towards the person we will become, we also develop an understanding, in a primitive way, of what and who cannot be trusted. (See Table 4.1 to recall the stages and tasks in Erikson’s model.)

A small baby who has good enough care from her primary carer (Winnicott, 1971/2001) is still likely to experience degrees of mistrust, shame and doubt but will easily recover their sense of competency and good feelings about who they are and about the people around them. As you will recall from Chapter 1, ‘good enough care’ means that parents attend enough for their babies to ensure they thrive, even though they themselves might consider they have not reached perfection, and that the child has experienced reasonably consistent secure attachment to his main care-taker (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1988) As Michael Rutter emphasized, human beings, given enough basic consistency, are resilient.

On the other hand, the baby who does not receive positive acknowledgement for who he is, or a sense that the carer values him, and experiences inconsistent or even negligent and abusive interactions with important adults, will probably have difficulties in relationships throughout his life, suffer low self-esteem and mental health problems (Mollon, 2006; Shemmings and Shemmings, 2011). There is a danger, although it is not inevitable, that children who experience extreme neglect and inconsistent care or are witnesses or victims of domestic violence in early childhood are more likely than others to replicate these experiences with their own children (Dryden et al., 2010; Nicolson, 2010; Shemmings and Shemmings, 2011).

I want to look now at how the details of an MDI approach might help to make sense of this phase of the lifespan, starting with the material, which I break down into the bio-material and socio-material contexts.

The bio-material context: conception and early growth

Biological development begins from conception when the egg/ovum is fertilized by a sperm to form the zygote (the fertilized egg). While the majority of conceptions occur in utero, through heterosexual intercourse, there are exceptions to this in which conception is assisted, frequently because of infertility and problems with conception (Dancet et al., 2011). However, there are reasons other than infertility for having assisted fertilization, such as lesbian couples where one or both partners wishes to become pregnant (Franklin, 1997).

At conception, the genetic inheritance of the future human being is laid down. This includes their sex, ethnicity, colour of eyes, hair and future height, as well as health, cognitive, intellectual and personality factors. Even so, the basic biology of conception is still not a total blueprint for the child’s future. The social environment plays a vital and equally sustainable part in forming the person so that diet and the quality of the physical environment (e.g. housing, air quality) can all affect the outcome of the genetic inheritance.

Basic physical skills are similarly influenced by genes and environment, and within norms (e.g. size, weight, ability to sit up, crawl, walk and talk) there are individual differences based on the material context.

The socio-material context

The socio-material context in infancy is closely related to the bio-material one in that rapid physical development links with the ability to experience the socio-material world. Think here about the work of Piaget described in Chapter 2 (Burman, 1997; Piaget, 1990). All knowledge of the infant’s world begins with information coming through her senses (Sylva and Lunt, 1983). These are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Using these senses the infant becomes aware of the environment and what is around her.

The infant interacts with the material context in order to develop processes that support this communication – perception and cognition. Perception is about awareness of the sensations that are experienced, thus gradually informing the infant that there is a world outside and inside her skin. Perception occurs through the eyes, ears and neurological sensors scattered throughout the skin and the internal organs. The infant can experience light and dark and very quickly can identify shapes. The infant hears and begins to identify specific sounds. The infant feels pain and discomfort and of course pleasurable sensations.

Through these sensations a sense of the world develops, as described in Chapter 2, particularly with reference to Piaget’s work. The infant therefore begins to engage in a relationship with the material context via and with her own body and with the physical and inter-personal environment (Kellman and Arterberry, 2000). This includes language recognition leading to the ability to form differentiated sounds and speech (Dehaene-Lambertz et ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• What to expect
• Introduction: what is so important about HGD?
• I Theories of HGD and how to think about them critically
• II The lifespan: a material-discursive-intra-psychic approach
• References
• Index