Developing Minds: Challenge And Continuity Across The Lifespan [Hardcover]

Michael Rutter (Author), Marjorie Rutter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465010377 | ISBN-13: 978-0465010370 | Publication Date: June 16, 1993 | Edition: First American Edition,

Most models of human development end abruptly with adolescence. But, according to the internationally renowned theorist and researcher Michael Rutter, we continue to mature throughout our life span. In this volume, Michael Rutter and Marjorie Rutter chart out in nontechnical language a comprehensive and vivid map of human growth from cradle to grave.Arguing that there are discontinuities as well as continuities to the growth process, they trace how basic aspects of psychological functioning (such as emotion and cognition) change over the course of life. The volume is organized around themes—anger and aggression, social relationships, intelligence and language—rather than specific age periods. Thus we see the parallels between life crises and challenges at different times of life (such as adolescence and old age). This original approach also reveals the full significance of both resilient and maladaptive responses to stress and adversity.The authors thoroughly mine decades of developmental research to transmute findings into brilliant nuggets of clinical wisdom. Covering all factors—genetic, social, historical, cognitive, biological—that shape human development, this pioneering book explores and explains not only the universal aspects of maturation but also how we each end up on our individual paths.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Rutter, M.D., F.R.S. is professor of child psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry (U.K.) and honorary directory of the Medical Research Child Psychiatry Unit. He is also the author of Helping Troubled Children and Maternal Deprivation Reassessed.Marjorie Rutter, S.R.N., is a clinical nurse specialist and postgraduate teacher in family planning, infertility, and psychosexual counseling in London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First American Edition, edition (June 16, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465010377
• ISBN-13: 978-0465010370
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,103,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Incoherent, boring and no new insights, January 2, 2002

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JJR - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Minds: Challenge And Continuity Across The Lifespan (Hardcover)

Professor Sir Michael Rutter may be one of the world's leading theorists of development, but this book, written together with his wife Marjorie, is as incoherent as the man's articles. It moves away from the traditional big developmental theories and views development as a dynamic process adopting a life-span perspective and emphasizing the need to consider both continuities and discontinuities and both risk and protective mechanisms.

Some sections on the abnormal (anxiety, aggression, alzheimer) are quite interesting, focusing on the question whether these developments are extreme versions of normal development or something qualitatively different. Unfortunately the greater part of the book (especially the first three chapters, which gave me the idea that the authors have really nothing to say) is rather unchallenging and boring, using findings from not so exciting research.

The biggest problem, though, is that the book jumps from topic to topic. This incoherence makes it not very easily readable. The authors aimed to explain the universal aspects of maturation as well as the individuality in development, but they end up giving either unsatisfactory and ambiguous answers or very simple, common sense explanations (the chapter on adolescence). It would have been nice if Mr and Mrs Rutter would have added a conclusion or summary to each chapter so that it would have been clearer what the main points of each chapter were. Sometimes one even gets the feeling that there is no point at all, that one is just reading about a number of research findings without a good connecting point or argument.

This book should have offered me new, challenging insights. It did not. What a shame.