Positive Adult Development
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Positive Adult Development
Positive adult development is a subfield of developmental psychology that studies positive development during adulthood. It is one of four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified, according to Michael Commons; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Commons divided positive adult developmental processes into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (i.e., orders or stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality. The development of people has focused on children and adolescence with several theories as proposed by Freud, Piaget, and Binet. Research in positive adult development supports the theory that development occurs during adulthood. Recent studies indicate that such development is useful in predicting things such as an individual's health, life satisfaction, and degree of contribution to the society. In those studies, those that were older rated higher than those that were younger, thus sup ...
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Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, morality, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation. Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature ''and'' nurture on the process of human development, as well as processes of change in context across time. Many researchers are interested in the inter ...
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Erik Erikson
Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity crisis. Despite lacking a university degree, Erikson served as a professor at prominent institutions, including Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, and Yale. A ''Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Erikson as the 12th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. Early life Erikson's mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came from a prominent Jewish family in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was married to Jewish stockbroker Valdemar Isidor Salomonsen, but had been estranged from him for several months at the time Erik was conceived. Little is known about Erik's biological father except that he was a non-Jewish Dane. On discovering her pregnancy, Karla fled to Frankfurt am Main in Germany where Erik was born on 15 June 19 ...
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Washington University Sentence Completion Test
The Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT) is a sentence completion test created by Jane Loevinger, which measures ego development along Loevinger's stages of ego development. The WUSCT is a projective test; a type of psychometric test designed to measure psychic phenomenon by capturing a subject's psychological projection and measuring it in a quantifiable manner. The test has been characterized as a good test for clinical use as it can measure across distinct psychopathologies and help in choosing treatment modalities; to this end, it is used by many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. History Stated simply, ego development refers to the observation that people do not remain psychologically static throughout their lives; rather, they undergo a long process of internal evolution. As such, the concept itself is ancient in origin and has received some form of treatment in almost all systems of philosophy and all schools of psychology. Loevinger conceived of an e ...
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Ellen Langer
Ellen Jane Langer (; born March 25, 1947) is an American professor of psychology at Harvard University; in 1981, she became the first woman ever to be tenured in psychology at Harvard. Langer studies the illusion of control, decision-making, aging, and mindfulness theory. Her most influential work is ''Counterclockwise'', published in 2009, which answers questions about aging from her research and interest in the particulars of aging across the nation. Early life and education Langer was born in The Bronx, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology from New York University, and her PhD in Social and Clinical Psychology from Yale University in 1974. Career Langer has had a significant influence on the positive psychology movement. Along with being known as the mother of positive psychology, her contributions to the study of mindfulness have earned her the moniker of the "mother of mindfulness." Together her work has ushered in the movement of mind/body medicine ...
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Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg (; October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget's account of children's moral development from twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views. Kohlberg's work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development". In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. Early life Lawr ...
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Phenomenology (psychology)
Phenomenology within psychology, or phenomenological psychology, is the psychological study of subjective experience. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or spoken word. The approach has its roots in the phenomenological philosophical work of Edmund Husserl. Giorgi, Amedeo. (1970). ''Psychology as a Human Science.'' New York : Harper & Row. History of phenomenology Early phenomenologists such as Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty conducted philosophical investigations of consciousness in the early 20th century. Their critiques of psychologism and positivism later influenced at least two main fields of contemporary psychology: the phenomenological psychological approach of the Duquesne School (the descriptive phenomenological method in psychology), including Amedeo Giorgi Giorgi, Amedeo. (2009). ''The Descriptive Phenomenological Method ...
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Existential Psychology
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation, and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation, existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in their life. Background The philosophers who are especially pertinent to the development of existential psychotherapy are those whose works were directly aimed at mak ...
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Robert Kegan
Robert Kegan (born August 24, 1946) is an American developmental psychologist. He is a licensed psychologist and practicing therapist, lectures to professional and lay audiences, and consults in the area of professional development and organization development. He was the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught for forty years until his retirement in 2016. He was also Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the Co-director for the Change Leadership Group. Education and early career Born in Minnesota, Kegan attended Dartmouth College, graduating ''summa cum laude'' in 1968. He described the civil rights movement and the movement against the Vietnam War as formative experiences during his college years. He took his "collection of interests in learning from a psychological and literary and philosophical point of view" to Harvard University, ...
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Adolescence
Adolescence () is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years, but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end later. Puberty now typically begins during preadolescence, particularly in females. Physical growth (particularly in males) and cognitive development can extend past the teens. Age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have not agreed upon a precise definition. Some definitions start as early as 10 and end as late as 25 or 26. The World Health Organization definition officially designates an adolescent as someone between the ages of 10 and 19. Biological development Puberty in general Puberty is a period of several years in which rapid physical growth and psychological changes occur, culminating in sexual maturity. The aver ...
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Postformal Thought
Developmental psychology initially focused on childhood development through Jean Piaget's four stages of human cognitive development, the last stage of which is known as the formal operational stage. Extending developmental psychology to adults, most neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development have posited one or more stages of postformal thought. Postformal thought is also addressed by some non-Piagetian theories of developmental psychology, including Michael Commons' model of hierarchical complexity and Otto Laske's constructive developmental framework. Postformal thought has been described as more flexible, logical, willing to accept moral and intellectual complexities, and dialectical than previous stages in development. Of postformal thought, Griffin and colleagues said, "one can conceive of multiple logics, choices, or perceptions ... in order to better understand the complexities and inherent biases in 'truth'". Jan Sinnot described postformal thought as the step be ...
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Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the journal ''Psychological Review''. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. The theory is a classification system intended to reflect the universal needs of society as its base, then proceeding to more acquired emotions. The hierarchy of needs is split between deficiency needs and growth needs, with two key themes involved within the theory being individualism and the prioritization of needs. While the theory is usually shown as a pyramid in illustrations, Maslow himself never created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of needs is a psychological idea and also an assessment tool, particularly in education ...
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Abraham Maslow
Abraham Harold Maslow (; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms". Hoffmann (1988), p. 109. A ''Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Biography Youth Born in 1908 and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Maslow was the oldest of seven children. His parents were first-generation Jewish immigrants from Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine), who fled from Czarist persecution in the early 20th century. They had deci ...
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