Development and Vulnerability in Close Relationships

by Noam; Gil G.

• ISBN13: 9780805813692
• ISBN10: 0805813691
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-01-01
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbau

Summary

How do people develop in their important relationships? How do two people come together to form a new, close relationship? How do relationships affect or determine who we are and who we become? These questions should be central to the study of mind and development, but most researchers neglect relationships and focus instead on analyses of individuals, as if people were basically alone, experiencing occasional fleeting moments with other people. Research based on this individualist assumption has dominated the behavioral and clinical sciences, but there are other voices, and they are growing. In this book, many of the scholars who are moving relationships and attachments back to the center of human development outline their central concepts, findings, and perspectives. People are fundamentally social, and relationships are part of the fabric of being human, forming an essential foundation that molds each person's mind and action. A mind does not reside in one person but in relationships and communities, composed of many people's interconnected minds, which mutually support and define each other. From the start and throughout life, each person develops strengths and vulnerabilities in important relationships in communities and cultures. Those relationships are so central to each person's activity and experience that without them, no scientific explanation can even begin to analyze mind and action. There is no mind without other people. There is no psychological vulnerability that does not involve others. The contributors to this book aim to establish a firm foundation for the role of relationships in human activity and health and to promote strong research by bringing together in one place most of the best research and theory on development and relationships. Their goal is to stimulate a more radical inclusion of relationships in mind, an ecological focus on the ways that relationships constitute action, feeling, and thought.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Foundational Role of Relationships in Human Development	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
References	p. xviii
Attachment and the Construction of Close Relationships	p. 1
Internal Working Models of Attachment Relationships as Related to Resilient Coping	p. 3
References	p. 22
Forms of Adult Romantic Attachment and Their Cognitive and Emotional Underpinnings	p. 29
References	p. 54
The Role of Psychological Defenses in the Representation and Regulation of Close Personal Relationships Across the Life Span	p. 59
References	p. 86
Acknowledgments	p. 86
The Social Construction of Cognitive Development	p. 91
References	p. 110
Revisiting Piaget Revisited or the Vulnerability of Piaget's Infancy Theory in the 1990s	p. 113
References	p. 128
Acknowledgments	p. 128
Construction of Vulnerabilities and Strengths in Relationships	p. 133
Reconceptualizing Maturity: The Search for Deeper Meaning	p. 135
References	p. 171
Acknowledgments	p. 171
Analyzing Development of Working Models of Close Relationships: Illustration with a Case of Vulnerability and Violence	p. 173
Acknowledgments	p. 196
References	p. 197
The Personal Meaning of Risk Behavior: A Developmental Perspective on Friendship and Fighting in Early Adolescence	p. 201
References	p. 232
Dynamics and Themes of Relationship in Personality Development	p. 235
The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development: A Puzzle, Some Evidence, and a Theory	p. 237
Epilogue	p. 256
References	p. 258
Gender Differences in the Development of Relationships	p. 263
References	p. 283
Acknowledgments	p. 283
Extending the Core Relationship Theme into Early Childhood	p. 287
Acknowledgments	p. 305
References	p. 306
Relatedness and Self-Definition: A Dialectic Model of Personality Development	p. 309
References	p. 334
Author Index	p. 339
Subject Index	p. 349
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