Developmental Psychology - Essay Example

Developmental Psychology Introduction My life may seem to have been full of great hardships to the eyes of an outside observer. However, looking back on the experiences that I have so bravely encountered and endured, I can see how I have grown into a much stronger person. There have been many personal milestones that I have surpassed, each of which brought along with it significant developmental issues as can be seen in psychological literature and its related theories. Body One theory of cognitive development that is relative to this essay was presented by Vygotsky. According to Schutz (2004, pg. 1): According to Vygotsky, all fundamental cognitive activities take shape in a matrix of social history and form the products of sociohistorical development. That is, cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by innate factors, but are the products of the activities practiced in the social institutions of the culture in which the individual grows up. Consequently, the history of the society in which a child is reared and the child's personal history are crucial determinants of the way in which that individual will think. In this process of cognitive development, language is a crucial tool for determining how the child will learn how to think because advanced modes of thought are transmitted to the child by means of words. Vygotsky’s theory rings true for the early years of my life. It is well known that what a child learns when he is young will hold true for him when he grows older. This was true for me as well, as could be expected for anyone. While there were no major milestones in my childhood that I can remember right offhand, I do recall one that occurred at the age of 10. This is when I reached puberty, having started menstruation for the first time and starting towards my adult life. This is a very trying time for a young female, as it separates her life from childhood into adulthood. Everything within her changes both emotionally and physically, not to mention mentally. It changes the very way she thinks and lives. She begins to lose interest in childhood delights such as toys and play, and she begins to notice boys and exceed them in their maturity levels and interests. It is, indeed, the time that the child takes what she learned when she was young and carries it on into adulthood, as is carefully referenced in Vygotsky’s aforementioned theory. Piaget also had a theory that worked with children’s development. In fact, his ideas have often been used in the field of education and in forming educational theories and forming the basis for the curricula within schools themselves. One key thought of his involved, as the milestone described above, maturation. He believed that this event allowed a child to understand the world around him and that, until a child reaches maturity, he or she is simply unable to understand certain things. He even proposed certain developmental time frames at which a child’s psychological abilities take off: 18 months, 7 years, and 11 years. As previously mentioned, the only one of these time frames that I recall was my reaching of puberty at age 10, which correlates with the approximate 11 year time frame that Piaget proposed with his psychological writings (Piaget, Inhelder, and Weaver, 1972). Not long after my maturation phase, I reached another milestone in my life. My sister died of a heart attack in 1985. This was a very difficult time for my family and I to endure. We grieved tremendously and were not sure how to deal with this horrible event or move on. This is where grief theories that have been proposed by psychologists came into play. The five stages of grief that are often proposed are “disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance” (Forbes, 2007, pg. 1). As I grew older, however, I noticed a slightly different reaction to additional events in my life that caused grief. My brother was stabbed to death in 1989 and, not long after that event, my boyfriend of 16 years died of a heart attack. This event occurred after I had become the Lions Club President, won many awards, and had reached my induction day. I wondered if my different reaction to these additional deaths was because of my experience with past grief in my life, or if there was some deeper psychological meaning behind it all. One possible study by Forbes held the answer. According to Forbes (2007): This study basically shows that yearning is the dominant negative grief symptom following the loss, not disbelief, sadness or depression and, overall, the main reaction was a high degree of acceptance. The researchers found that soon after a death, acceptance becomes the most commonly felt emotion for the bereaved, rather than the expected disbelief or depression. Acceptance is also the last emotion to reach its peak, they noted. The researchers also found that negative emotions such as anger had largely peaked by six months after the loss. This suggests that if someone seems stuck in their grief after this time period, they may be having a more difficult time coping with their loss and may need counseling or additional support. Originally, the five stages of grief theory involved only four stages, which were “shock-numbness, yearning-searching, disorganization-despair, and reorganization. Then, world-renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book called On Death and Dying, which adapted the four-stages of grief into a five-stage response of the terminally ill to their impending death. This work evolved into the five stages of grief commonly recognized today, according to background information in the study” (Forbes, 2007, pg. 1). The final stage of grief as presented in the above theory can be seen in a milestone that I reached after my boyfriend of 16 years died. I moved to Australia to forget about him. In Australia, I married and started a new life. This was the apex of the acceptance or reorganization phase as described in the grief theories above. These milestones and another milestone that I will discuss next can be explained by Bandura’s theories. Bandura was primarily concerned with learning by example. According to Bandura (2006, pg. 2): It is evident from informal observation that human behavior is transmitted, whether deliberately or inadvertently, largely through exposure to social models. Indeed, as Reichard (1938) noted some years ago, in many languages ‘the word for ‘teach’ is the same as the word for ‘show.’’ It is difficult to imagine a culture in which language, mores, vocational activities, familial customs, and educational, religious, and political practices are gradually shaped in each new member by direct consequences of their trial-and-error performances without benefit of models who display the cultural patterns in their behavior. It is reasonable to assume that I took the actions that I did following the grievous moments in my life as a result of actions I had seen others take. It just made sense to me. I had to get away. I had seen so many other individuals choose to take that action following traumatic events that happened to them. The practice was so common that it was almost a tradition or a custom in my culture. Through trial-and-error, as explained in the theory mentioned above, I had discovered that the manner in which I was handling traumatic events simply did not work for me and I had grown confused and disoriented as to how to handle these types of events. As a result, I had to take a new approach to these ordeals and start a new life on my own. I did more in my new life than just marry. I also decided to further my education and enrich my personal, mental, and psychological life and experiences. It was at this point in my life that I began to realize that I was pulling on strengths that were actually inflicted during my earlier years. I began to realize that the traumatic events that had shaped my life had actually made me stronger. I was becoming a completely different person. My new goal became to further enrich my life and start anew. I began by studying nursing. Now, I am studying a counseling course and learning many new things which I am sure I will carry on with me further into life, as well as which well further help me to understand the traumatic events that have so challengingly endured throughout my life. I have just reached a new milestone in my life, but I can learn much from reflecting on the past milestones that have met and surpassed. This particular milestone also deals with grief, as my brother-and-law has just passed away and left me grieving once again. This time, I choose to assess the situation with the apperception theory of grief, however. “Unlike the traditional theories of grieving, which mainly address losses of loved ones, this theory explains our reactions to any life change, whether dreaded or welcomed. More importantly, understanding this theory suggests what we can do to heal from our crises” (Watson, 2004, pg. 1). According to Watson (2004, pg. 1): Theories are what we understand, not what we know. We know we're alive because we can observe it. But knowing we're alive doesn't satisfy us, because we wonder about not living, and whether there's an afterlife. We develop theories to answer these questions. If our theories do this well enough, we adopt them as parts of our core belief systems. Further, because our beliefs are central to the ways we live our lives, we become emotionally dependent on them. And we don't give them up without a fight. TES is a scientific theory of organization per se—its origin, maintenance, and evolution. The apperception theory of grieving described here is the first clinical application of TES. That is, it explains a crisis as a disorganizing process and grieving—indeed, all healing—as an organizing process. My personal healing and organizing process brought me to a new realization. All of the people that had been such large influences in my life and had passed on had all made large contributions to my life. They had done their part and played their role. Now it was time for me. It was time for me to move on beyond what I knew and branch out on my own. My new life with my new husband and my pursuit of education are the culmination of this. My studies in the field of nursing are, in a large part, a result of my desire to help other people after suffering so many great losses in my life. I choose to influence the lives of others in a positive manner that will allow them to avoid some of the hardships that I had to endure. Even though this is true, my studies in counseling and psychology have begun to make me wonder if this is necessarily a positive role. As harsh as it may sound at first, some things are just meant to happen. Things that occur in a person’s life shape the very person that he or she becomes. The events that happened in my life made me a much stronger person. So, in a way, I wonder if intervening in the lives of people in such a manner as to make them avoid grief is in fact making them weaker in some way or another. Conclusion Although readers of this reflective essay may, on the outside, see a life full of hardship and grief, my life has actually been quite a fulfilling experience for me. I have grown into a very strong, brave, and mature woman. The many milestones that have met and endured brought along with them developmental issues that have long been studied in psychological literature. Specifically, the theories of Vygotsky revolve around cognitive development of a child as he or she grows into an adult. I experienced this with my first milestone as I reached puberty at the age of 10. I also experienced Piaget’s theories as I grew through puberty and experienced my first loss. It was discovered that the things I learned in childhood had stayed with me and had shaped how I was thinking and behaving as a young adult. In a different manner, the theories of dealing with grief shaped my adult life. This is true because I experienced a lot of loss of people I greatly cared about in my adult life. I followed the stages exactly how they were proposed in the psychological literature on the subject. References Bandura, Albert, 2006, ‘Psychological Modeling: Conflicting Theories’, Aldine Transaction: New Jersey Piaget, Jean; Barbel Inhelder, and Helen Weaver, 1972, ‘The Psychology of the Child’, Basic Books: New York Schutz, Ricardo, 2004, ‘Vygotsky and Language Acquisition’, English Made in Brazil: Brazil. ‘Stages of Grief Theory Put to the Test’, 2007, Forbes Magazine. Watson, Donald E., 2004, ‘The Apperception Theory of Grieving’, Mills and Sanderson: Massachusetts. Read More