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Introduction
Human development is one of the most fascinating and at the same time most complicated fields of study in psychology. Being influenced by a myriad of factors, which range from genetic ones to the influences specific to a certain area where an individual grows, personal development requires closer scrutiny as a path to understanding individual needs and possible developmental issues. By considering the details that might seem insignificant at first glance, one may be able to infer critical information about the said individual, as well as his or her emotional, psychological, and social needs. Considering my personal development as an example will help to shed light on the significance of family attachment, the influence of family members, and the importance of having a role model while growing up in order to gain a set of values and skills that will guide one throughout the rest of ones life.
This paper will offer a brief observation of my personal history with the following application of developmental theories by Freud, Erikson, and Piaget, as well as the nature-vs.-nurture perspective and the concept of Bowlbys attachment. The described theories will help to frame the process of my development in a way that will outline different biological and sociocultural influences that have shaped my identity. Thus, crucial conclusions about the further course of my development and the opportunities that I currently have for personal growth will be made. Moreover, my example of personal development will help to illustrate the applicability of the theories mentioned above and determine their strengths and weaknesses. As a result, key directions in which the further study of individual development and developmental analysis, in general, should be headed, will be defined.
Life Journey: Description
Prenatal and Infancy
Gathering information about my prenatal development and infancy was, perhaps, the hardest part of this assignment since any traces of what could serve as a credible source for this data have mostly faded away by now. However, from the stories that were told in my family about the specified part of my life, I can gather that my parents were infinitely happy to have me as their child. Being the third and the youngest of the children, I was anything but a problem child since my parents already had a plethora of experiences. According to what my parents told me, I was healthy and developed at a regular rate.
Early Childhood
My early childhood memories are also mostly positive since my parents were very supportive and caring. However, since my parents were struggling financially and were attempting at reviving their opportunities for education and career development, I was mostly left to myself with regard to my cognitive development and the acquisition of relevant skills. As a result, I was not provided with multiple opportunities for early childhood literacy development. Nonetheless, I must mention the efforts that my parents put into ensuring that I was taken proper care of and provided with enough social interaction since they asked my grandparents to help them with my upbringing while they were away. Nevertheless, despite my parents efforts, the family fell apart, with my father taking my siblings with him and moving to Alabama, and me staying with my now-single mother and very few prospects for financial sustainability.
Middle Childhood
Due to the financial struggles and the emotional distress that my parents divorce caused, I started feeling alienated from the rest of the students at my school. The fact that my family became expressively poor did not help, either since it created an even greater gap between my peers and me, adding a layer of social class differences to the differences in our experiences. The situation was aggravated by the blatant racism that was rampant within my community at the time. As a result, my middle childhood was marked mostly by the attempts at escaping from the stressful settings of my home and school. As a result of poor attendance, my grades dropped significantly, and I nearly failed the fifth grade. However, at the point when I reached adolescence, I realized that I did not have to blame myself for my parents divorce and that coming from a low-income family did not devalue me as a person, or as a learner.
Adolescence
As a result of the change in perspective mentioned above, I spent most of my adolescence making up for the lost opportunities in studying and communication. Having recognized that my mother cared for me and that I had healthy family relationships, I started changing my attitude toward the alterations in my social and personal life. Gradually, I accepted the change and improved my academic score, gaining enough opportunities for further studies. Moreover, with the support of my mother and grandmother, I found the strength to oppose the racism and prejudices that I faced within my community.
Emerging Adulthood
Having graduated in 1987, I felt quite uncertain about my future. While my academic score improved tremendously after I had changed my attitude toward studying, I had very few chances of going to college, which was why the Army was the next best choice that I had. After enlisting, I gained a range of new abilities, including discipline and crucial leadership skills. After serving in the military, I returned to my academic life to study at college. However, my mothers untimely death and the subsequent death of my older sister, Dawn, at the age of 45, disrupted my life tremendously, causing me to abandon learning for a while.
Adulthood
Although I loved my mother and sister dearly, I realized that their life choices, particularly, the misuse of drugs and the unwillingness to introduce change to their environment, were the main causes of their deaths. Therefore, even having a loving memory of both of them, I decided to make appropriate changes to my own life and avoid falling into the same trap as they did. Consequently, I focused on studying and returned to college to continue my education. Moreover, I found solace in the Christian faith, which also has been helping me from straying away and succumbing to harmful lifestyles. Having graduated, I applied for the position of caseworker for a child welfare organization. Moreover, I managed to find love and create my own family. Now, 25 years later, I am a happy mother and a wife. Both my husband and I support each other and our children extensively and strive to remain a happy and healthy family.
Theory Application
Freuds Psychosexual Stages of Development
To dissect my early childhood development, several crucial theories will be required. First, the use of the Freudian analysis will be vital in order to understand the significance of the events that transpired at the earliest stages of my life. According to the theory of psychoanalysis created by Sigmund Freud, a child undergoes five critical stages of development when gaining agency. Specifically, the phases of oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital development need to be mentioned as the crucial milestones in the psychosexual development of a child. In retrospect, I appear to have passed each of the specified developmental stages successfully, apart from the phallic one. Namely, the absence of a father figure at a pivotal moment in my childhood development due to my parents divorce defined the absence of a strong father figure in my life. According to Freuds theory of psychosocial development, the specified gap in my psychosocial development is supposed to signify the lack of family attachment and further difficulties in building relationships with men. However, the specified assumption is quite far from the trust since I had a plethora of guidance and support from my mother and grandmother. Moreover, there seem to be no complications in my current relationship with my husband.
Eriksons Stages of Psychosocial Development
A similar result can be obtained when applying Eriksons theory of psychosocial development to the life journey that I have experienced so far. Eriksons theory posits that an individual typically undergoes eight stages of development throughout his or her life, and failing to complete at least one stage results in underdevelopment. Therefore, the specified theory leads to the same implications of me missing out on communication with my father leading to the development of possible issues later in life. Specifically, Eriksons theory suggests that an individual must undergo the following life stages: Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Integrity vs. Despair (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). As the specified stages are passed, the following qualities are expected to emerge: hope, will, purpose, competency, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). Condensing Eriksons theory to basics, one should infer that the specified framework emphasizes the significance of social development in an individuals life as the foundation for future progress.
As seen in my case, failing to complete at least one of the stages of Eriksons framework, indeed, leads to rather significant complications. Specifically, I failed to experience the Industry v. Inferiority stage, during which competency is developed since I had been defaulting on my academic responsibilities at the time due to the poor family environment. As a result, the failure to build basic competency in learning affected my life to a noticeable extent. However, unlike Eriksons theory predicted, the failure in managing the specified stage of my life did not lead to the destruction of the rest of it. Instead, it slowed the progress down slightly, yet the further insight into my needs has helped to course-correct my further academic and professional development without leaving significant obstacles in my education or career.
Moreover, I managed to pass the next two stages, specifically, Identity vs. Confusion (Fidelity) and Intimacy vs. Isolation (love) successfully, building resilience and gaining the necessary qualities. Approaching the Intimacy vs. Isolation stage, I am certain in my ability to develop love as the crucial virtue that will help me to continue building strong relationships with my children and my husband.
Piagets Four Stages of Development
Since Piagets developmental theory seeks to explore the development of thinking and thought processes, it would be reasonable to focus on my analytical and critical thinking abilities specifically when applying Piagets stages of a development framework to the assessment of my progress. According to Jean Piaget, an individual undergoes four crucial phases during early childhood and infancy. These include the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages (McLeod, 2018). Although my childhood abandonment issues were expected to play a major role in the acquisition of language skills, imagination, and intuitive intelligence at the preoperational stage, the specified effect did not occur. Supposedly, the described deviation from Piagets theoretical perspective occurred due to the involvement of my grandmother and the support that she provided in teaching me key skills. Similarly, despite major hindrances and challenges, the transition to the formal operational stage occurred quite naturally in me. Namely, the difficulties that I experienced at school concerned not the gaps in early childhood education or the absence of skills, but the presence of emotional distress. Therefore, the applicability of Piagets four stages of development to my life journey could be seen as possible.
Bowlbys Attachment
The theory of Bowlbys attachment suggests that a child needs to have a close bond with at least one significant adult, preferably, their parent, for successful development. As a child, I had both of my parents as role models up until their divorce, which helped me to accept the crucial values and shape my behavior in a way that allows for effective interactions (Shiller, 2017). Therefore, for the most part, Bowlbys theory aligns with my experiences.
Nature vs. Nurture
The dichotomy of nature versus nurture implies a collision of two perceptions of development, namely, the biological and social ones. Specifically, the nature-related argument posits that biological factors predetermine the course of an individuals development, whereas the nurture-driven one argues that the social environment has a greater impact. In my cause, no significant biological deviations from the norm have been observed, which is why nature has played little to no effect in my psychoemotional and psychosocial development. In turn, nurture has had a tremendous impact on my progress. Specifically, the issues of attachment in early childhood and challenges of failed social interactions during adolescence, as described above, have produced a significant effect on my development. Moreover, the influence of my grandmother as a crucial social factor has contributed to my development extensively.
Explanatory Power of the Theory
As the application of the theoretical frameworks provided above has indicated, some of the theories did not work as well as they were expected to when evaluating my personal development. The Freudian theory has proven to fail particularly strongly due to the obvious mismatch in the expectations that it sets for the absence of a father figure in my early childhood. Specifically, the contrasting evidence of my successful interactions with men and the sense of closure in my childhood development due to the efforts and support of my mother and grandmother proves the Freudian theory wrong (Sanford, 2017). Nonetheless, my experience does not invalidate the role of psychoanalysis in the promotion of the understanding of the psychosocial development of an individual. Instead, it points to the need to update the theory to include the factors that may shape a childs psychosocial development differently.
Theory Critique
As the overview of my life and the development that I experienced throughout it has shown, the applicability of some of the theories to explain the challenges experienced in personal development is quite questionable. While most of the theoretical perspectives offered a decent explanation of the changes and challenges that I faced, most of them failed to encompass the uniqueness of these experiences and help to predict the further development of the situation. For instance, the Freudian analysis proved insufficient since the absence of a father figure in my early childhood did not prevent me from building the agency and self-sufficiency needed to enter adulthood and build a happy and independent life.
Specifically, the Freudian theory, specifically, the attempt at dissecting my childhood by splitting my early development into psychosexual stages did not produce a significant effect since my abandonment issues have not led to any tangibly negative outcomes (Sanford, 2017). Although one could claim that my adolescence was a bit tumultuous, the observed issues should be attributed to the changes in the socioeconomic status of my family and the failure to integrate into the academic environment successfully.
Remarkably, the framework offered by Piaget mostly aligned with the changes that I have experienced and observed in myself throughout my personal development. Although I had to rely on the stories that my mother told me about my early childhood when assessing the specified part of my life, the rest of my life journey aligned with Piagets framework quite well. It appears that the theoretical approaches examining biological changes in an individual as opposed to the alterations defined by social interactions offer a more accurate representation of an individuals life journey (Fleer, 2018). The specified observation can be explained by the uniqueness of the social experiences of every individual and the inability to introduce a uniform framework that could explain each experience specifically.
Overall, the application of theories to the analysis of my personal development has helped to understand how the transfer from theory to practice occurs in developmental psychology studies. Moreover, the analysis conducted above has facilitated a better understanding of how developmental issues can be addressed. Moreover, the dissection of my life journey and the developmental stages that I have passed has allowed outlining the connection between gaps in psychosocial, psychosexual, and other types of development, and the social, emotional, and psychological challenges that an individual may encounter later in life.
Conclusion
The example of my personal development is viewed from the tenets of the theories by Freud, Erikson, and Piaget, as well as the nature-vs.-nurture argument and Bowlbys attachment concept, have indicated the crucial role of family relationships in the subject matter. Namely, apart from early childhood development, in which family support is vital for gaining critical skills, the presence of guidance from family members during adolescence and even early adulthood is paramount to the psychological, emotional, and social well-being of an individual. Despite the challenges that I have faced throughout my life journey so far, I have managed to find the inner strength to fight for my happiness due to the extensive support of my family. Moreover, the guidance that I received from my parents at the earliest stages of my childhood development has defined my ability to learn, be proactive, and have a strong sense of self-identity, agency, and independence.
Moreover, the application of the theories listed above has shown that the key theoretical tenets do not necessarily align with specific time periods directly. Instead, theories of development serve the purpose of explaining the issues that one might be experiencing at a specific stage of their development. Rather, as my personal case has indicated, the absence of expected observations characteristic of a certain time period in an individuals life journey may be indicative of a developmental problem and point to the presence of an unusual factor that may impede the introduction of a certain phase of personal progress into an individuals life. Moreover, in some cases, the absence of alignment with specific theoretical premises does not necessarily indicate the failure to reach a certain developmental stage but, instead, shows the need for a particularly profound and detailed analysis.
References
Broderick, P.C. & Blewitt, P (2015). The life span of human development for helping profession (4th ed.). Pearson Education Inc.
Fleer, M. (2018). Child development in educational settings. Cambridge University Press.
McLeod, S. (2018). Erik Eriksons Stages of psychosocial development. Simply Psychology
Sanford, N. (2017). Self and society: Social change and individual development. Transaction Publishers.
Shiller, V. M. (2017). The attachment bond: Affectional Ties across the lifespan. Lexington Books.
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