Challenging Freud's assumption that an individual first develops intrapsychically and is only later confronted with the demands of external reality, Carolyn Saari posits that human beings initially construct a picture of their immediate environment and then construct their identities within that environment. The Environment is an argument in three parts. Part 1 discusses psychoanalytic and developmental theory, showing that while such theory has assumed the existence of an environment, it has taken for granted and therefore left unexamined its role in human development. Michel...

Challenging Freud's assumption that an individual first develops intrapsychically and is only later confronted with the demands of external reality, Carolyn Saari posits that human beings initially construct a picture of their immediate environment and then construct their identities within that environment. The Environment is an argument in three parts. Part 1 discusses psychoanalytic and developmental theory, showing that while such theory has assumed the existence of an environment, it has taken for granted and therefore left unexamined its role in human development. Michel...

How are we to understand the complex forces that shape human behav- ior? A variety of diverse perspectives, drawing on studies of human behavioral ontogeny, as well as on humanity's evolutionary heritage, seem to provide the best likelihood of success. It is in an attempt to synthesize such potentially disparate approaches to human develop- ment into an integrated whole that we undertake this series on the genesis of behavior. In many respects, the incredible burgeoning of research in child development over the last decade or two seems like a thousand lines of inquiry spreading outward in an...