Towards an Existential Phenomenological Model of Life Span Human
Development
Martin Adams
Abstract
This paper looks at a number of existing theories of human development from
an existential- phenomenological perspective. Most existing theories are
stage theories which attempt to find common factors in human development in
terms of invariant stages, phases or periods. Human development therefore
is in terms of movement from one stage to the next. It is suggested that
this passive view of human life is incompatible with an existential-
phenomenological perspective because it does not take into account the
givens of existence i.e. the primacy of time, death, freedom and
responsibility to make meaning, and the lived body. An alternative
existential model is proposed whereby the person moves towards a greater
understanding and ownership of their existence in a world of others through
encounters with largely chance events which they make, to a greater or
lesser extent, a part of their own autobiography.
Key Words
stage theory, opening, moment, episode, narrative, responsibility,
opportunity.
Introduction
Human development in the context of the life span is a subject that has not
been covered at all well by the existential-phenomenological tradition.
This paper will look critically at what has been said about human
development both from within the existential-phenomenological tradition and
without, and will make some suggestions about what the characteristics of
an existential-phenomenological theory of life span human development might
be.
Human development, research methods and stage theory
A theory of human development needs be able to say something about how a
person changes over the life span and also how change comes about.
Life span development is usually described in terms of stage theory,
and in stage theory life is thought of as consisting of stages, phases or
periods and change is from one to another, rather like going up a ladder
with the rungs as invariant stages. They all assume a relatively continuous
rate of change in accordance with their prescribed landmarks. Another is
that the stages or phases have a prescribed order which must be gone
through in order for maturity to be reached. One progresses from a simpler
and immature level of behaviour and experience toward more and more complex
levels.
That there are such things as stages at all is debatable. Van den Berg
(1961, p54) points out that the idea that humans get older in a structured,
continuous and gradual way is a modernist bias. Before the modernist era,
he asserts, discontinuity, leaps and accidents were accepted as being
descriptive of the life span. There is some evidence in Europe that the
idea of a post-infancy childhood is relatively recent and is an artefact of
economics. Until 1400 the end of biological dependence, about age 5, people
were distinguished only by their physical ability to work (Hagen 2001,
p24). Aries (1962) agrees that in Medieval times children were given no
special attention, affection or care by older members of the family or
community. Shakespeare's stages referred to below do not contain a
reference to what we now call adolescence.
More importantly though, Briod (1989, p117) points out that we must not
assume that that such a conclusion does not mean that there is no
difference between a child's and an adults experience, merely that such
things are likely to have a strong cultural overlay. The implication is
that the notion of a stage approach to the life cycle is an artefact of the
research method.
The research method used to investigate a subject will produce findings
which are in accordance with the assumptions of the research method
(Henwood and Pidgeon, 1995) and Sartre reminds us that we are 'nothing else
but the ensemble of [our] acts' (Sartre, 1997, p32) and every action
betrays its values. In an analogous way every theory betrays its origins.
The natural scientific research method has been used almost exclusively
to investigate human development and is based on the separation of the
observer, (the subject), from the observed, (the object), but also by the
assumption of that both are essentially passive or reactive (Thinès, 1977).
While not all stage theories have been derived directly from planned
natural scientific research projects, what has happened is that the
assumptions of natural science have become embedded in the theories.
The assumption that the observed object is mechanistic and subject to
forces beyond its control clearly works very well for an inanimate object,
what Sartre describes as a being in-itself, but is wholly inappropriate for
human beings (Giorgi, 1970).
Although the intention of the natural scientific method is to produce a
more accurate objective version of reality, what has arisen instead are a
large amount of incompatible assertions which are themselves untrustworthy
because the founding principles are flawed (Fourcher, 1981). Kagan (1984,
p25) refers to the science of development as '....relatively weak theory
and an insufficient number of reliable facts'. What happens with stage
theory is that the textured world of lived time is fragmented into its
constituent parts and then reconstituted and the reconstituted whole is
then taken as being the truth.
Another way that culturally embedded assumptions are evident in the way
we think about life span development is in the words that are used. We need
to be aware of their resonances because these resonances are indicators of
our unexamined assumptions and meanings.
In his critique of Descartes, Ryle (1949) described this as a category
error, in which a quality of one group of constructs is attributed
erroneously to another group of constructs .
Binswanger (1975, p318) describes it as the origin of superstition. The
more a person sees the world in terms of their unexamined belief about the
world, the more the world will be seen to correspond. The body is then not
seen as being in-the-world, but separate from and acted on by the world.
Ones existence is not seen as being dynamically co-constituted in-the-
world, but caused by the world. This leads one to attribute human qualities
to objects, material qualities to humans and causation to interpersonal
relationships. This process is also called reification (Rycroft, 1972,
Laing, 1965, 1971) and is a necessary precondition for the natural
scientific method.
There are words borrowed from biology like instinct, maturing,
flowering, ripening, development, growth and evolving. These cannot help
but give us a deterministic biological spin to our understandings.
During the 19th century the new technology of hydraulics led to the mind
being thought of in hydraulic terms. People talked, and still talk, of
'running out of steam', 'letting off steam' and 'releasing pent up
emotion'. Much 20th century psychotherapy focused on the hydraulic
metaphor, believing that catharsis was central to human development.
From technology there are words like making, constructing, transforming,
changing, building and changing gear. This tradition also marks the
beginning of the idea of the self as something that we can make, have,
construct, transform, change or build.
With the advent of computers we now hear much more about the brain as an
information processor, of memories being stored in the brain, of
retrieving memory as if the brain was a hard drive. And of the need to be
re-or de-programmed. Some contemporary theoretical perspectives are based
on this notion. Lilly (1974) extends this metaphor to its logical and
flawed conclusion. This model of memory is only a updating of the 19C
Gestalt psychology visual image model because it still assumes that there
is a true image of the event recorded that just has to be recovered. Kotre
(1995) reviews some of the literature in which entirely fictitious events
were 'remembered'. Contemporary narrative researchers now talk about memory
being reconstructed and not recovered and there is a resilient contemporary
challenge to stage theory from narrative theory (Strand 1997, Singer 2004).
All these metaphors in addition to considering memory as unchanging and
stored, or the self as something which is true or constant, or the
unconscious as a place with contents, or the past as having gone, are
category errors and make it only superficially easier to think about life
span events. This ease is at a cost of the loss of our sense of co-
constituted responsible reflective beings.
Because of their resonances, none of these words are consistent with an
Existential-Phenomenological approach to human life span. Nevertheless in
the interests of grammatical sense and ease of reading it is hard not to
use them from time to time.
An evaluation of stage theories
Looking at all the stage theories one cannot easily get a consensus of the
principles of human development. This is not to suggest that we have
nothing to learn about the life span from all stage theories, simply that
because of the assumptions that led to their creation they can only deal
with the structural dimensions of development and not the existential
dimensions. (Silverman 1979).
Stage theories can be superficially distinguished by the number of
stages they have. Some have two (Klein 1946, Freud 1911), some three
(Sophocles 1947/Graves 1960, Fairbairn 1952/Grotstein and Rinsley 1994,
Neitzsche 1961, Kierkegaard 1992), some four (Winnicott 1991, Stern 1985),
some five (Freud 1923, Maslow 1962), some seven (Jung 1934, Shakespeare),
some eight Erikson 1950/Marcia (1980) or more (Sheehy 1976, Levinson 1980
and 1996). Bowlby (1988) does not talk so much about stages as of critical
periods. Some have stages with transitions between, Jung (1934), Fairbairn
1952/Grotstein and Rinsley 1994.
But the number of stages is for us the least interesting difference.
There is a strong undercurrent of biological correlation either concrete
or metaphorical, e.g. Klein, Sophocles, Stern and Jung. Some models e.g.
Klein, Erikson, Sheehy and Levinson are more tightly linked to
chronological age, some e.g. Fairbairn, Bowlby, Winnicott, Maslow and Jung
are not. Some e.g. Stern, Winnicott, Bowlby and Fairbairn emphasise
intersubjectivity, some e.g. Neitzsche and Kierkegaard do not.
Few stage theories consider the whole life cycle. Of those that do, Jung
and Erikson ascribe different qualities to different ages, and Stern,
Fairbairn and Bowlby do not.
Crucially, and Stern is an important exception, they emphasise by
omission, the persons passivity and lack of agency. They are agency blind.
Neitzsche and Kierkegaard emphasise agency but in an individualistic rather
than a co-constituted way, whereas Stern integrates it into the development
of what he calls intersubjectivity. What Stern calls intersubjectivity is
what other writers like Trevarthen (1979) and Schore (2003) call secondary
intersubjectivity.
Bowlby, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Maslow, Neitzsche and Kierkegaard all have
an undercurrent of a seeking out of an experience that will enhance life.
Some characteristics of an existential-phenomenological theory of human
development
Briod (1989) notes that we have all had the experience of having been a
child, of having had a life prior to the present. We know what it was
like. This knowledge is accessible directly to people currently living
through their own life span. This is what makes it possible for there to be
an existential-phenomenological approach to human development.
However, looking phenomenologically at the life span immediately
presents us with a problem. This is that we are perpetually situated in a
context, a situation, from which we view and construct the world.
Most writing on the life span (and most other things) is by adults
simply because they have the biological and economic power to do so.
Existential-phenomenological writers are no exception. This gives an adult
middle aged centred view to existence and the life span. The drawbacks of
this also were noted by Jung (1934, p119). Simply by virtue of having an
adult point of view there is a before (childhood) and an after (old age)
and this gives rise to the artefact of three stages of life.
They are viewed as being separate from one another only because of the
different viewpoints we have of them. Usually all are looked at from the
same place - adulthood. Childhood is viewed as having happened. From the
position of adulthood we have to re-member how it was. Adulthood is viewed
as presently happening. There is no perspective or way of looking at it
based on distance in time to see how it is. Old age is usually viewed from
the point of view of an adulthood which has no direct experience of it,
only second hand, imaginative and inferred. It is not immediate, nor is it
reconstructed. No one knows anything about the part of life to come,
because they have not been there. But one has to project oneself into it.
We can never understand the experience of someone older than ourselves in
the same way that we can understand the experience of someone younger.
With respect to childhood, or anything in the past, the way we remember
our childhood is always as a remembering adult. Young people often say that
they are not understood by those older than them. Nevertheless those older
have actually had the experience of being young, although they may forget
it, but those younger are yet to have the experience of being older. There
is nothing to be forgotten, and therefore they have no direct way of
understanding those older.
Phenomenology aims to return us to the experienced roots of our
existence so that we may find a commonality or as Husserl terms it the
invariant structures of lived experience.
An existential-phenomenological theory of human development will need to
accommodate not only genetic phenomena such as biological maturation and
life long attachment needs but also the growth of consciousness and agency
in such a way that it situates the individual within the givens of
existence. It will need to answer questions like, what elements in a
person's relational history lead them to lose the ability to real-ise
choice.
Such a theory must accommodate:
a. that we are active interpreters and creators of our world,
b. that no observation we make can ever be free of assumptions and
c. that such meanings as we personally create are never totally
independent of nor dependent on other people or other meaning
systems. In other words we co-constitute each other.
d. the givens of existence i.e. the primacy of time, death, freedom and
responsibility, and the lived body.
It must preserve what is closest to present lived experience and say
something about what is common to all people.
Some theories consistent with the existential-phenomenological tradition
Laing (1965, p41) gives a short but concentrated sketch of the beginnings
of human development. He says,
Biological birth is a definitive act whereby the infant organism is
precipitated into the world [.......] Under usual circumstances, the
physical birth of a new living organism into the world inaugurates
rapidly ongoing processes whereby [......] the infant feels real and
alive and has a sense of being an entity with continuity in time and a
location in space. In short, physical birth and biological aliveness are
followed by the baby becoming existentially born as real and alive.
Usually this development is taken for granted.
In this short sketch he covers a lot of ground. He is saying that
physical birth is the starting point for an organic process that results in
an awareness of being in a particular place and maintaining integrity
through time. This is what he calls becoming existentially born.
The rest of this book expands upon what happens when it is not taken for
granted.
His view is similar to Buber (1958, p41) who says
Every child that is coming into being rests in [...] the undivided primal
world that precedes form. From her... we are separated and enter into
personal life. But this separation does not occur suddenly and
catastrophically like the separation form the bodily mother; time is
granted to the child to exchange a spiritual connexion for the natural
connexion with the world. But he does not possess it yet, he must make it
into a reality by seeing and hearing and touching and shaping it.
Symington (1993) has what he calls an existential theory of the
development of narcissism. Narcissism is the assertion that 'I am all that
I need, and that if other people are important at all they are there to
meet my needs'. He suggests that is a reactive position, a defensive cul-de-
sac, which denies our fundamental intersubjective and co-constituted
nature. It is the result of a decision made in childhood when the
individual(s) who had the responsibility for bringing the child into
existential birth did not do it in a good enough manner. It is not causal
theory and as it was a decision made, it can be unmade.
The idea of the future only being able to grasped by an understanding of
the past is described by Sophocles in his play Oedipus the King. The play
starts with Oedipus as the King of Thebes and the plot unfolds in a series
of flashbacks. Briefly the plot is that having been adopted at birth
Oedipus sets out to find his biological parents. He kills a man in a fight
at a crossroads and continues on to Thebes where he finds the town
terrorised by a monster - the Sphinx - who destroys all who cannot solve
her riddle. The riddle is
What being, with only one voice,
has sometimes two feet, sometimes three,
sometimes four.
and is weakest when it has the most?
(Graves, 1960, p10)
The answer of course that Oedipus gets, is Man, who crawls on all fours
as a child, walks on his legs as an adult and needs a walking stick in old
age. The Sphinx dies as a result of its riddle being solved and Oedipus is
feted as the saviour of Thebes. He is then able to get a sense of his
destiny, or as Bollas (1989, p47) says to rediscover his future, and goes
on to marry Jocasta who it transpires is the wife of Laius who he killed at
the crossroads and also that they are both his biological parents. In this
reading of the myth it is as if knowledge of the process of the life span -
ones unwittingly acquired heritage and ones destiny - gives the holder an
enormous but double edged power - a sense of destiny but also a
responsibility for it.
Fairbairn's model (Fairbairn, 1952, Grotstein and Rinsley, 1994) is of a
gradual movement from immature dependency on others, through an extended
transitional period to mature dependency on others. These two points are
best considered as two points at either end of life with the task of life
being to negotiate the transition from one to the other. Movement to mature
dependency comes about by the person's openness to new relational
experience.
Bowlby's (1988) attachment theory is derived from Fairbairn's and
introduces the idea of critical periods and developmental pathways. Bowlby
(ibid.) talks about the importance of the child's, psychological,
physiological and relational needs being met consistently in infancy and
childhood such that the developing person is able to develop a sense of a
'secure base' from which to explore the world. If the person does not gain
this sense, their relationships, for there is a life-long dependency need,
will be characterised by exploitation and fear instead of openness and
love. This secure base is not very different from Laing's position. Cohn
(1998) considers that Bowlby's model of developmental pathways which
asserts that the infants pathway is 'determined at every moment by the
interaction of the individual as he now is with the environment in which he
happens to be' (1988, p136), is consistent with a phenomenological
perspective'.
Stern's (1985) model concentrates on the subjective experience of the
infant and suggests four dimensions of the sense of self that emerge
sequentially and continue simultaneously throughout life and in parallel
with four corresponding dimensions of relatedness. Once active, all remain
available and none become obsolete or preferenced. He suggests that it is
a biological given that we order our experience through the identification
of the four invariants of agency, self coherence, self affectivity and
memory. He therefore considers a sense of agency to basic to our nature.
The senses of self are
1. the sense of an Emergent Self
2. the sense of a Core Self both in terms of self with self, and self
with other. At this time, he says, the 3 senses of, agency - 'I am the
mover of my arm', coherence - 'My skin bounds and belongs to me', and
affectivity. 'When I move my arm it feels like this', become
integrated by an ability to maintain an updated history and lead to a
sense of self history and hence autobiography - 'I exist and continue
to exist over time, I can change and remain the same'. The building
block is a memory episode which is a chunk, a moment, of lived
experience comprising, affect+physical memory+intensity+nuances of the
other. It is evoked when current experience is similar. The evolving
sense of self is built up by the increasing library of remembered
episodes. I will return to this idea later.
3. the sense of the Subjective Self, and
4. the sense of the Verbal Self. Language becomes a new medium of
exchange with others and to create shared meanings. The use of
language parallels the understanding and use of names and pronouns,
and gender identity. Through language, we-meanings become negotiated.
But it can also fragment self experience by causing a split between
the sense of a verbal, social self and the subjective intrapersonal
sense. The infant gains entry into a wider cultural membership at the
risk of losing the wisdom of the 'lived body'. Experiences resistant
or invisible to verbal (i.e. social) representation may become
alienated, split off and uncoded. What Stern calls intersubjectivity
develops at this time.
Merleau-Ponty's (1964) ideas on child development have also been covered
in this journal by Langdridge (2005). Merleau-Ponty asks about the
acquisition of reflectiveness and self image. He describes the link between
the social and the intellectual and describes them together as the total
situation of the infant. We are not separate from our relations with
others, He is concerned with the question of how it is that a child, who is
a mass of sensations not available to another and which give rise to
subjective feelings of humanness, gets the idea that an other person is in
some way like himself. The problem of other minds and of the growth of
consciousness. Merleau-Ponty's view of development is one in which we
gradually come to accommodate the idea that we are in the eyes of the
other.
He suggests an existential developmental sequence which parallels
physiological development that starts with precommunication, primary
undifferentiation, in which the infant has no awareness of difference
between itself and the other, since to have this sense would presuppose a
me that does the differentiating.
The first bodily point through which the infant experiences its
relationship with space and others is the mouth and awareness of the body
and others is parallel, fragmentary and cumulative.
Distress at about three months when someone goes away suggests not only
that a sense of me-and-you is beginning to be an organising principle of
experience but also that incompleteness can be acknowledged and
experienced. He uses Piaget's (1958) term 'de-centreing' to describe this
sort of event where the child discovers that the nature of its lived-
world-with-others is not what it thought it was. It is the beginning of the
ontological tension between the me-I-feel-myself-to-be and the me-that-
others-see-me-as-being. Other ontologically significant points are when the
infant is able to discover its agency by being able to control its own body
and the understanding of the nature of mirrors and photographs.
The acquisition of perspective in drawing is a significant point since
it implies that one can see things from a viewpoint rather than being in
the viewpoint. One is able then to see oneself, to have self-consciousness.
And that if one can see from one viewpoint then one can see from another. A
sense of the other, often called empathy, is the awareness that I live in
the expressions, not just facial expressions, of others, and vice versa. He
means a sense that I am here and also in the mind of the other. Laing
expanded on this (1966, 1971, 1972).
The oedipal dilemma is re-framed by Merleau-Ponty as a major de-
centreing of existence, when an awareness that was growing over the first
four or five years of perhaps not being the most important (only) person to
the primary caregiver comes to a head and the child has to accommodate the
idea of sharing importance. The birth of younger siblings can also
facilitate this de-centreing. Consciousness, which is consciousness of the
relationship of oneself with an other, always arises out of de-centreing.
Sartre also gives an account of life span development from an
existential perspective. Silverman (1979) makes a useful comparison of
Sartre as a representative of a contextualist theory of human development
with Piaget as a representative of a structuralist, or stage theory.
Sartre asserts that there are no established capacities for development
and says instead that from birth the individual experiences the world
directly and existentially (Silverman, 1979, p120). An implication of this
is that no life is determined. From the beginning of life the infant is
conscious in a pre-reflective sense. What he means by this is that even
though the infant is not reflecting on experience its consciousness is
intentional such that it envelops objects of knowledge.
From the beginning of life we become the product of our intentional
enveloping choices, which cannot be undone. Consciousness is like a light
we shine on the world, and the objects it illuminates become incorporated
into our sense of self. This act of knowing comes to constitute the roots
of the sense of self and as such, infancy is a 'crucial event' (Sartre,
1997, p70).
This is the process whereby the infant gradually acquires knowledge of
itself in the world and is cumulative. Although consciousness is empty of
content, its dynamic nature means that it is always projecting by present
actions and choices towards new self definition in favour of what can be,
and in opposition to what has been which the individual must accept if he
is not to be in bad faith.
It is through the natural parallel process whereby the child begins to
notice itself and others as objects of attention and reflection, that a
sense of 'me', an ego, is born. The Sartrean ego is a dynamic product of
its actions and choices.
Although Sartre discounts a developmental plan, he does acknowledge
(1964) the value of play-acting in childhood. He does not go so far as to
suggest a chronology, although one can be inferred from his autobiography
(1964), but the age a child moves on from play-acting corresponds
approximately to the age of 'de-centreing' as Piaget and Merleau-Ponty call
it. Prior to this age play-acting is not viewed as acting at all, since in
order to see something as play-acting one must be able to something as real
in order to differentiate it. The move on from play-acting corresponds with
a greater self-awareness. Winnicott concentrates his attention on the
period before and after this de-centreing.
By virtue of experiencing the world from birth, directly and
existentially, the individual gradually becomes aware of his own existence
and the practico-inert conditions of his 'situation' and defines a
fundamental project which is carried on through life in terms of an
original choice (Sartre, 1943 p721). Such choices which are invariably made
in, or predicated upon, an event in childhood, can always be revised and
added to by subsequent choices. But this is often not the way it feels. Due
to the anxiety of freedom and responsibility evoked by change one often
comes to view the original event as factual rather than mythic (Kotre,
1995, p206), and causative rather chosen.
What Sartre calls an original choice is always a significant event
because there is a moment of self recognition when the person decides to be
someone distinct and unique. It is almost always a reactive decision.
Ontologically a persons project is to be unified in the world i.e. to be
coherent, (Laing, 1965, p41) and all his actions are chosen to this end.
For example, Baudelaire made an original choice when found himself
abandoned, and he chose solitude as an act of self assertion (Sartre
1947p18). His fundamental project was therefore about the choice of
himself as someone different from everyone else.
Likewise, Sartre's original choice involved becoming a writer (1964,
p90). Roquentin's, in Nausea (1965), is when he suddenly becomes aware of
the transience of essences and the permanence of existence.
As long as a person is contented and at ease with his place in the world
it can be said that equilibrium is present and in this state the person is
pre-reflective. Equilibrium is a form of self-deception when the world and
sense of self has become static and the possibility of choice is reduced in
favour of the reification of the self and the causality of the past.
Reflection always follows tension, a de-centreing. As with Merleau-Ponty,
if there is no tension there is no reason to reflect. Only when the person
reflects on his situation and confronts his existence is that equilibrium
upset.
The moments when this happen are crucial in revealing the nature of the
persons original choice and the basic condition of the persons experience
of themselves with others and the world, and are always transformative.
Heidegger (1962, p388) refers to it as a 'moment of vision'.
Sartre gives importance to childhood as the beginning of the way of
relating to others and the world, and as the time when the original choice
is made and the life's project determined (Sartre, 1997, p71). It is in
this context that an individual is able to embrace or deny a sense of
personal agency such that he is able to continually update his
autobiography. The task of a Sartrean psychoanalysis is therefore is to
attend to the biographical situation of the individual in which the
original reactive choice is made and carried out and to consider the
possibility of updating it so that it is more situation appropriate. It is
never solely a cognitive or intellectual task. It is an existential task.
Every moment has the potential to make us aware of our existence and our
original choice and consequently to be transformative. There is a constant
dilemma between this awareness and the desire to evade and deny the anxiety
of constant change - the anxiety that comes from the awareness that 'I am
never bound by my choices nor am I unable to make new choices' (Denne and
Thompson, 1991). At any particular moment a new choice can/will be made
which will contribute to the unification of individual experience.
Holmes (2001), talking about the influence of narrative approaches on
attachment theory, says '...despite the potentially limitless capacity of
memory, most people have a small number of prototypical memories that
epitomise their fundamental relationship to others and to the world' (p88).
Holmes calls these '..."nodal memories" in the sense that they represent a
concentration of the assumptions, fantasies and working models about the
self in relation to others' (ibid.). Kotre (1995, p104) calls them 'nuclear
episodes'.
A person will read a particular, age appropriate, meaning into these
events that then becomes an organising principle around which they
understand everyday experience. In this way a sense of autobiography and
coherence through time forms. Holmes suggests that in psychotherapy,
psychological health does not depend upon the (futile) search for the
correct memory and its interpretation, rather than the 'dialectic between
story making and story breaking' (ibid. p87). A securely attached person
who is able to play is able to make and break narratives and able to update
autobiography in line with current experience. An insecurely attached
person is not.
This clearly overlaps both with Sartre's 'original project' and with
Stern's 'memory episodes'.
The metaphors which are most commonly used in stage theory referred to
above, i.e. develop, grow, change were criticised because of their
biological or technological resonances. The question remains of what might
be the most consistent terminology for the Existential phenomenological
tradition. What might be the most accurate root metaphor that enables us to
retain some 'fidelity to experience' (Thompson (1997).
The spirit of Laing, Buber and Merleau-Ponty suggests that an
appropriate word would be 'opening' (Briod, 1989, p119). This word suggests
a movement of lived time and alterations in the awareness and impingement
of the world. It also resonates with Heidegger's notions of dis-closing,
dis-covering, making manifest, letting be etc.
Existential birth and development is therefore about a cumulative
opening to experience which leads the person to reflect on their situation
in the world, the givens their existence and their responsibility for their
life.
While exposure to the givens of existence is inevitable, the way a
person engages with them is personal and unique, and is correlated with the
biological maturation and life-long attachment needs. The developmental
pathways taken are unique and chosen in the light of past experience and
choices.
Natural exposure to the givens of existence gives rise to a sense of
autobiography via a succession of moments (short) or episodes (longer). It
is inevitable that there will be some moments or episodes that prompt a
greater realisation of their relationship with life, themselves and others,
and some that do not, but these can occur at any time and mostly cannot be
predicted.
A life will often be experienced and recounted as consisting of
discontinuity, stasis, and chance. Any moment is theoretically as good as
any other but the degree to which a person is able to be open to these
moments is a product of chance, opportunity and an ability to be committed
to choice which is predicated upon secure attachment.
Moments and episodes in psychotherapy
This idea of the therapeutic moment and episode is well known to
psychotherapists and it is curious that this has not impacted more on
theories of life span development.
Stern (2004) argues that interpretation is not enough to bring about
therapeutic change and that what is needed is what he calls 'implicit
relational knowing' (ibid. p118). He distinguishes between 'present
moments' and 'now moments'. 'Present moments' are the relatively frequent
occasions when the therapist and the client are talking about issues that
present themselves as elements of the relational dynamic and are both and
seeking to understand them. Although meaningful and emotionally charged
these often also have a large element of 'talking about'. This is the
technical aspect of therapy and change. He calls this the conscious verbal
domain. Interventions in this mostly intellectual domain can only lead to
'present moments' if 'implicit relational knowing' is present. By this he
means the awareness the therapist has of the being of the client. He calls
this the implicit relational domain. 'Now moments' can never be planned
and are always a surprise to both therapist and client. They lead to a
'moment of meeting' which is qualitatively and quantitatively different
from what happened immediately previous. A 'now moment' is an intense
experience that may last only a very short time but whose reverberations
continue for a very long time. They are about the persons faith in
relationship and are always transformative. The person is brought face to
face with their existence, their situation and responsibility for it.
The Words To Say It by Marie Cardinal (1984) is an autobiographical
novel of her psychoanalysis and offers an example of the moment in therapy.
She has finally plucked up the courage (p.106-110) to talk to her analyst
about a recurring hallucination. She writes 'There, I've said everything,
I've given myself over entirely... If I didn't find an explanation for the
hallucination I knew I would never progress. I knew I would never have a
normal life'. Her analyst then said, 'Without thinking, tell me what [....]
makes you think of.' This precipitated a life changing moment in which she
was able to open herself, not without considerable resistance and
reluctance, i.e. anger and evasion, to all the associations that the mythic
image of the hallucination evoked in her. The opening she experienced was
of course not caused simply by the words used by the analyst, it was to do
with her total situation, meaning the trust built up over the years of
patient listening by her analyst and her increasing frustration at the life
place she found herself in. The timing and the simplicity of the
intervention was crucial. Cardinal's analyst's interpretation is just such
an interpretation. The analyst's understanding of the narrator was so
accurate that he was able match his intervention with her need such that it
led to an opening. In the traditional sense it is not an interpretation,
but the analysand's need is understood so clearly that there is obviously
interpretative work going on.
On some occasions such an event may be a mistake on the part of the
therapist, a sudden absence, or a tactless comment, but the effect will be
the same, that the clients meaning system is de-centred. Symington (1990)
has referred to this, linking it to freedom. When not accurately timed and
placed it will lead to a closing down, a shutting instead of an opening.
Some other examples of moments and episodes
The idea of transformational moments and episodes is embedded in our
culture in terms of the rituals that we use to mark the end of one way of
being and the beginning of another - birthdays (the date on which one
originated), new year, the first day at school (symbolic of a separation
from parents and the ability to have secrets and to know things that
parents do not know), leaving home, bar mitzvah, christening, graduation,
the first sexual experience, engagement, marriage, parenthood, mid-life
(Jaques, 1965) funerals, retirement, death of a parent, birth of grand
children, death of a contemporary, death of someone younger etc. etc. These
are all culturally acknowledged moments and episodes that can lead us to
reflect on our existence and the responsibility we take for it. But they
are by no means the only significant events in a persons life. Often we are
prepared for them and we are able to engage and fully own them. When we are
not, there will almost inevitably be adverse consequences. At the right
time and place they will, in Laing's (1965, p41) words, enhance the feeling
of being 'real and alive' and having 'a sense of being an entity with
continuity in time and a location in space'. At the wrong time they will
fracture this sense.
By far the richest source of material from which one can deduce an
existential-phenomenological perspective on the life span is from
literature. Notwithstanding its reconstructed quality a novel would not
resonate with its readers unless it contained some truth about the dilemmas
of existence, unless it was existentially believable. This is a measure of
the worth of any work of art, that its meaning resonates with the viewer or
reader.
In Anthony Powell's series A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975) the
incidents, the moments, he chooses to make the books of, e.g. the unity
created by the brazier at the beginning and the bonfire at the end of the
series, Stringham reporting the schoolmaster La Bas to the police, the car
crash with Templer, the narrator Nick Jenkins waiting unenthusiastically
with dates in cinema queues, X. Trapnel's unpublished novel strewn over the
Regents Canal at Little Venice and Widmerpool reinventing himself every few
years, among many others, attain mythic meaning and demonstrate very well
the tension in life between discontinuity and coherence, boredom and
excitement, and deliberation and accident within their situational context.
All these events are moments in the life of the participants that come to
symbolise and can evoke an opening to experience which leads the person to
reflect on their situation in the world, the givens of existence and their
responsibility for their life. They have nothing to do with stage theory.
Sartre's autobiography (1964) is his retelling of the story of his
childhood from some 50 years distant and has many such moments that
achieved mythic status for him and e.g. the ritualistic conversations which
he had with his mother and her half finished sentences (ibid. p30) which
cemented their intimacy (ibid. p136), and his much later preference for
thrillers rather than Wittgenstein (ibid. p49).
In Salley Vickers novel Miss Garnet's Angel (2000) Julia Garnet lived in
the same flat, did the same job and had the same value system all her
working life and was generally content and at ease with her place in the
world. When her situation, her context, was changed on retirement and the
death of a close friend, her equilibrium was disturbed and she realised
(pre-reflectively) that things did not have to be that way. She moved to
Venice. What happened in the magical surroundings of Venice was an opening
to all the aspects of existence - sexuality, spirituality, friendship,
desire, that she had previously denied herself. Things that she had
previously dismissed as insignificant, meaningless or trivial attained
enormous importance as she reassessed her life. The moment of her
retirement led to an episode of her time in Venice which consisted of a
succession of chance encounters which became existential moments that made
her question all that she thought she knew. She did not, as in stage
theory, reach that time of life when she settled into old age and death.
William Boyd's Any Human Heart (2003) is a first person present tense
diary genre novel that describes the making of an entire life out of a
combination of chance occurrences and opportunities taken and missed that
become a sequence of moments and episodes with only as much insight and
reflectiveness as is possible in a contemporaneous account. The unity of
the life of the narrator, Logan Mountstuart, thus lived is the totality of
his choices and actions.
In J.G. Ballard's (1991) novel The Kindness of Women, the central de-
centreing moment of the accidental death of the narrator's wife
reverberates in a transformative and unhinging way through the rest of his
subsequent life.
In a similar way, the accident of the snowball hitting the wrong person
echoes within and across generations and continents in Robertson Davies The
Deptford Trilogy (1983).
Woody Allen's film Crimes and Misdemeanours is a study of choice and its
consequences in the wider context of peoples relationships with each other
and the kind of world they will leave behind. Towards the end of the film
the character Allen plays is interviewing an ageing philosopher who says
We are all faced throughout our lives with agonising decisions and
choices. Some of these are on a grand scale, some are on a lesser scale,
but we define ourselves by the choices we make. We are in fact the sum
total of these choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, that
human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of
creation. It is only through our capacity to love that we are able to
give meaning to an indifferent universe. Most human beings seem to have
the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like
their family, their work and from the hope that future generations might
understand more.
An autobiographical moment. I have lived and worked in London and
travelled to and from work by bicycle for many without any incidents of any
sort. I never wore a helmet giving the reason to my many questioners that
it probably would not make any difference and that I did not like the feel
of it. I liked the freedom of being on the bike. I also resented their
questions and valued my independence of thought and action. On the way home
one dark Wednesday evening only two hundred yards from home my front wheel
caught a hole in the very familiar road and I came off and hit my head on
the road. The next thing I knew I was coming round in my local hospital to
the sound of the doctors talking to each other about my injuries. They
asked me my phone number and I surprised them by being able to tell them. I
had been unconscious for about 45 minutes. Considering the circumstances,
my injuries were comparatively superficial.
Reflecting on this unforeseen moment afterwards led me to reassess my
situation. Very briefly this was that I acknowledged that my situation in
life was not simply as an individual, but as a member of a family and that
my wife and son (to name but two) would be affected by anything that
happened to me and moreover that I was responsible for more than I had
previously acknowledged. This is not to say that I had previously treated
them with disrespect and distance, but after the moment my
interconnectedness with them was more tangible. The situation I had been in
when I had made the original choice to maintain independence of thought and
which subsequently gave rise to the decision not to wear a helmet was made
in childhood under rather different circumstances, but still adhered to.
There had never previously been a similar occasion that called it into
question. I revisited this original decision and realised I could make a
new more context-consistent choice, without being made to. I was aware of
the givens of existence of London cycling and generally took great care
over the unpredictability of other road users and of pedestrians. But I
could not predict the unpredictable, that a hole in the road would appear
overnight. My situation, the givens of existence and my responsibility came
into focus in that near death encounter and the effect was transformative.
Conclusion
In this paper I have looked at theories of human development in terms of
stage theory and critically examined them from an existential-
phenomenological perspective. As a result of this I have proposed some
characteristics of what an existential-phenomenological theory of life span
human development might be. In contrast to stage theory which proposes a
sequence of defined stages that all people go through in the life span, I
have proposed that human development is characterised by discontinuity,
accident and commitment to choices made. Moreover that change comes about
as a consequence of an opening to experience which leads the person to
reflect on their situation in the world, the givens of existence and their
responsibility for their life. These occasions I call moments or episodes
and are the times when the person becomes intensely aware of the choices
and decisions they have made and that these can be unmade or revised.
Martin Adams is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice and a
visiting lecturer at Regents College and the New School of Psychotherapy
and Counselling, both in London. He is also an artist. His particular
interests are in the relationship of theory to everyday life, and the
nature and purpose of artistic representation. Address for correspondence
[email protected].
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