Clocks, engines, and quarks-love, dreams, and genes - What makes development happen?

That psychological growth and maturation throughout the lifespan involve pr ogressive linear processes is an implicit assumption of all models of devel opment. Within psychoanalysis, a particular focus has been those processes that hinder forward development and manifest themselves as regressions or f ixations or in character structure. However; the implicit assumption of pro gressive, linear development leaves unexplored the central question of what are the processes that govern developmental progressions. What makes psych ological development happen in more or less predictable ways and yet allows for considerable individual variability? And are those developmental progr essions inevitably forwardly progressive? Questions regarding what regulate s and integrates development are relevant not only for understanding the no rmal building up of the internal world and of childhood psychopathology but also for those times of dramatic mental reorganization in adulthood surrou nding events such as pregnancy and aging and for issues of psychological ch ange during and after an analysis. Clinical material from analyses with a c hild and an adult and from interviews with four- to five-year-old children is used to explore individual fantasies of how development and change happe ns. The central rob of internalization and object relations in regulating p sychological development is emphasized.