John M. Broughton

The Divided Self in Adolescence

In contrast to positivistic self-concept psychology, the cognitive-developmental approach looks at concepts of selfhood itself. Interviews with adolescents reveal that they have a complex ‘divided met

Piaget’s Structural Developmental Psychology

Piaget’s psychology of the decentered epistemic subject, with its cybernetic competence theory of cognition, generates two related problems. First, the possibility of subjectivity is ruled out, and with it, both consciousness and self-consciousness. Second, the dynamic transformation of society through history is diminished to a trivial level. Dispensing with self and society in this way seriously constrains the potential of Piagetian theory for explaining human development.

The Cognitive-Developmental Theory of Adolescent Self and Identity

In recent years, a cognitive-developmental approach to psychology has grown out of the work of Dewey, Baldwin, Piaget, Mead, and Kohlberg. Despite difficulties of both a theoretical and an empirical nature, this approach has matured to a point where it rivals psychoanalytic theory in scope. Although it is a general psychology of development, recent post-Piagetian work has permitted the emergence of a specific theory of adolescent phenomena.

An Introduction to Critical Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is a manifold of diverse human activities. It is not just a scientific discipline combining theory with practice and research. It is also wholly a part of society, a social institution with a professional structure and a public presence. Not only does it influence social behavior, but it also represents a special form of continuous participation in the political process. It not only reflects ongoing social activities but joins concertedly in their formation, regulation, and reformation.

Babes in Arms

The umbilicus of the 1990s is hardly severed, yet the neonate cries out the message of fresh and vigorous surface-to-surface contacts between the great powers. The American president is no longer seen as a “missile-toting cowboy”; he is now “kind Uncle Sam” in Mr. Gorbachev’s eyes. Last Christmas, kids dragged their parents to Bloomingdale’s or the U.N. to catch a glimpse of the supreme Soviet. In the fairy-tale world of newscasting, the unprecedented traffic snarl-ups resulting from his visit were affectionately dubbed “Gorbilock.” This Christmas, Eastern Europe seems to be blossoming early while Lithuania prepares for self-emancipation. Even Castro confronts voluble demands for reform.

Women and moral development: Introduction to papers by Philibert and Sayers and their respondents

It is now almost five years since the appearance of Carol Gilligan’s book on women’s moral development, In a Dzffeyent Voice. in this accessible volume of interlinked essays, Gilligan sketched a critique of psychology’s tendency to conceive the life cycle in male terms. She upbraided psychologists, especially developmentalists and in particular Lawrence Kohlberg, for turning a deaf ear to how the other half lives. Although it was not Gilligan’s intent to impugn the character or intelligence of the great developmental theorists, her writing has served to draw attention to the fact that the disproportionate representation of men among that group may not be entirely a coincidence. A critical audience, then, especially among women, is coming to reconsider the scientific “discoveries” about human development in relation to the gender-specific context in which such discovering has traditionally taken place. Gilligan’s work marks a special case of the more general criticism (see, for example, Keller, 1985) of the notion that science is conducted from a neutral, ungendered standpoint. In the moral domain, the equivalent notion is captured in the formalism of the “original position”,described by liberal ethical philosophers such as John Rawls. Gathering from its extraordinary commercial success and the widespread discussion that it has generated, Gilligan’s book must have struck a deep psychological chord. Men and women outside academe and clinical practice as well as male and female scholars from virtually every discipline have become involved in such discussion. This breadth of concern and the lively nature of the debate suggest that recent preoccupation of the discipline and profession of psychology with issues of maleness and femaleness (see, for example, the Summer 1986 issue of Psychotherufiy) may be more than contingent intellectual fashion. Rather, it seems likely that the preoccupation represents a particularly salient point at which contemporary psychology interdigitates with large scale societal transformations in the relations between the sexes, between authority and women, and in the fabric of the family. The renewed interest in the nature of men and women, in the concrete dynamics of their relationships, and in the increasing tension between the cultural forms of “masculinity” and “femininity” may well represent a significant accomplishment of feminism as a social movement. The current quest for an understanding of gender is not kntirely original. Freud and his colleagues, faced not only with the early emancipatory efforts of