chological well-being require sophisticated thought about the meaning of
relationships and the nature of psychological well-being. This book provides
a contemporary view of development that addresses many of these ques-
tions.

Our book differs from other studies of development in two ways. First, it
describes the role of other people, institutions, and ideas in the experience of
the self and the making of meaning across the entire life course. The early
role of others is widely appreciated by students of development. Many
investigations recognize the roles of others later in life, but this book is the
first description of the evolution of the roles of others as a central theme of
the entire life course. Second, this book is also unusual in emphasizing the
multifaceted nature of development. We believe this approach is closer to
the reality of human living than viewing development as the expression of
the evolution of a single central motive or aspect of personality.

Knowledge of human development is growing rapidly. There are many
legitimate areas of controversy and debate. Many readers, especially stu-
dents and practitioners, may understandably seek clear, definitive, simple
statements about human development. We often cannot provide them. To
understand ideas about development, students, at whatever level, need to
know the contexts of the ideas. What were the philosophical and political
conditions under which the ideas emerged? What methods were used to
explore them? But, given the enormous range of this volume, anything
approximating thorough coverage of the field is impossible. For these rea-
sons, we have not attempted a comprehensive critical discussion of the basis
for the ideas we present. Instead, we have indicated the kinds of evidence
available, some of the situations in which the ideas have originated, and,
particularly, the social and political context and significance of developmen-
tal investigations.

The Essential Other adopts several viewpoints that have emerged in the
last quarter century. First, we focus on meaning and the creation of meaning.
In this century psychological investigations, including psychoanalytic stud-
ies, have sometimes attempted to approach the study of people as scientists
have traditionally investigated physical systems, looking for the underlying
mechanisms of manifest phenomena. Without denying the potential rewards
of that approach, we have focused on how the effort to make coherent emo-
tional sense of experience affects people's lives.

Second, we have found that the self and personal meaning are best under-
stood in terms of the experience of relations with other people, institutions,
and ideas--what we call essential others. This viewpoint has emerged in
many contexts in the human sciences but nowhere so clearly as in psycho-
analysis. Over the past half century--largely as a result of systematic devel-
opmental study and also because of the social tensions unique to our own
time--psychoanalysis has increasingly recognized that today's analysands

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