Growth in Adulthood: A Revised Psychoanalytic Framework for Adult Development

ABSTRACTPsychic development over the course of adulthood has been largely neglected in the psychoanalytic literature over the past 30 years. This paper is an attempt to update a psychoanalytic understanding of adult development and to begin to illustrate its clinical value. Over time, increased longevity has changed the experience of life phases, and our ideas about development have moved away from rigid stage theories and universal concepts toward a more flexible, individualized, and socio-culturally informed understanding of the core challenges that define development of the personality over the course of life. In this paper I will focus on important aspects of self-experience across the adult life cycle to outline a revised and expanded scheme of the key intrapsychic tasks of adulthood. I will use an extended case example to illustrate how the psychoanalytic practitioner can use this adult development perspective to inform treatment. Finally, I will consider the applicability of the “developmental object” concept to adult treatment and to our ideas of how people change over the course of life, both within and outside treatment.