“[A]n overview of the past suggests that today's investigators areas much determined by history as they are makers of it.” (Cairns, 1983, p. 90)

The defining features of developmental psychopathology concepts include attention to theunderstanding of causal processes, appreciation of the role of developmental mechanisms, andconsideration of continuities and discontinuities between normality and psychopathology.Accomplishments with respect to these issues are reviewed in relation to attachment disorders,antisocial behavior, autism, depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual development.Major research challenges remain in relation to measurement issues, comorbidity, genderdifferences, cognitive processing, nature–nurture interplay, heterotypic continuity,continuities between normal variations and disorders, developmental programming, andtherapeutic mechanisms in effective treatments.

Efforts to understand the etiology of adult mental disorders by studying children hasproduced unanticipated changes in our understanding of pathology, individual development, andthe role of social context. Among these are the blurring of the division between mental illnessand mental health, the need to attend to patterns of adaptation rather than personality traits, andthe powerful influences of the social world on individual development. Current developmentalviews place deviancy in the dynamic relation between individuals and their contexts. At anotherlevel, when we view the history of developmental psychopathology, dialectical developmentalprocesses are evident as we trace how patterns of adaptation of researchers, expressed intheoretical models and empirical paradigms, increasingly have come to match the complexitiesof human mental health and illness.

This essay explores implications of current trends in developmental science forunderstanding psychopathology at the dawn of the new millennium. Over the past half century, ithas become clear that uniform and general principles of development (i.e., those that areapplicable at all times, to all people, and in all places) will be of limited utility in understandingthe processes of greatest interest in development and psychopathology. Instead, such processesare characterized by complexly organized individuals engaged in developmental transactionswithin multiple contexts (ranging from the biological environment of neurons to the culturalsystems of meaning that shape people's lives). These transactions in turn often yieldvariable outcomes. In order to portray how we have come to this conclusion, we first provide aview of contemporary research in three areas of early development: the biology of the developingbrain, the complexities of early emotional development, and the cultural contexts of childdevelopment. We then trace how an increasing appreciation of organized complexity,developmental transactions, and the meaning of context have played out in theemerging field of infant mental health before closing with our vision of new opportunities for thestudy of experience in the midst of variation.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the role of culture as an explanatory construct indevelopmental processes and outcomes, and its implications in the understanding ofdevelopmental psychopathology. Literature reviews were conducted by historical period:1930–1939, 1960–1969, and 1990–1999. The percentage of the totalarticles and chapters pertaining to cultural issues increased as a function of time. Both conceptualand methodological continuities and discontinuities were observed among the three periods. Thepreponderance of comparative studies using deficit models still remains, but more enlightenedalternative conceptual models, within culture studies, and measures of cultural processes, areemerging. In contrast, although contextual influences are considered important in developmentalpsychopathology, the field lags in its empirical consideration of cultural influences. The need toseriously address these issues will increase as globalization and rapid cultural change becomeeven more the norm than the exception.

In the coming years we can look forward to research that clarifies specific mechanisms thataccount for the interplay between genetic and environmental influences on psychologicaldevelopment. Certain misconceptions, arising from research traditions initiated by FrancisGalton on the one hand and G. Stanley Hall on the other, may now be set aside in the light ofnew evidence. Three important findings promise a new synthesis. First, while each of us is bornwith about 100,000 genes that, under ordinary circumstances, do not change, the expression ofthese genes on behavior is dynamic. Some genetic influences are expressed early in development,but others are manifest many years later. Second, genetic factors often account not only for someof the individual differences in the measures of adjustments we typically use to monitordevelopment but also for individual differences in environmental experiences that covary withthose measures of adjustment. Indeed, genetic factors have been found to account for a surprisingamount of covariance between measures of the social environment and of adjustment in youngchildren, adolescents, and adults. Third, the expression of genetic influences are very malleableand responsive to the social environment. These new findings are revealing specific mechanismsfor the interplay of genetic and social environmental factors in four domains. First, the socialenvironment may play both a necessary and specific role in the expression of particular geneticinfluences on a range of behaviors from depression to social responsibility. Second, anunderstanding of the interplay between the social environment and genetics may lead to a clearerdefinition of the phenotypic manifestations of particular genetic influences. Third, wewill—as a result of these studies—have a clearer fix on the timing of importantevents and their sequence in development. Fourth, this new genre of work promises to illuminemore completely mechanisms by which the social environment influences developmentindependent of genetic influence.

Nongenetic factors have a major influence on psychopathology. Knowledge on specificpsychosocial risk and protective mechanisms is more limited because of inadequate attention tomeasurement issues, person effects on the environment, and the possibility of genetic mediation.Nevertheless, a range of research strategies may be used to provide rigorous tests of causalhypotheses; these have shown the importance of environmentally mediated risks. Challenges forthe future include greater use of such research strategies, improved measures of psychosocialrisks that can be applied to large samples, investigation of origins of risks, identification ofcauses of time trends in levels of psychopathology, delineation of psychosocial effects onlifetime liability, understanding of environmental effects on the organism, appreciation ofprocesses involved in developmental programming, and understanding of individual differencesin susceptibility.

Psychoanalysis ushered in this century. Will its influence on developmental psychopathologyend in the next? The paper explores some critical obstacles in the way of psychodynamicresearch, including the fragmentation of psychoanalytic theory, the relative independence oftheory from its clinical and empirical base, the predominance of inductive scientific logic, thepolymorphous use of terms, the privacy of clinical data, the dominance of the reconstructioniststance, and the isolation of psychoanalysis from psychology and neurobiology. Notwithstandingthese limitations, core psychoanalytic precepts are not only consistent with some of the mostimportant advances of the last decade but may also be helpful in elaborating these newdiscoveries in the next century. Psychoanalysis is centered on the notion that complex,conflicting, unconscious representations of mental states constitute a key facet of normal andabnormal development. This notion retains its power, and deserves a prominent position amongthe major frames of reference to guide developmental science in the next century.

Child development involves both reactive and self-regulatory mechanisms that childrendevelop in conjunction with social norms. A half-century of research has uncovered aspects ofthe physical basis of attentional networks that produce regulation, and has given us someknowledge of how the social environment may alter them. In this paper, we discuss six forms ofdevelopmental plasticity related to aspects of attention. We then focus on effortful or executiveaspects of attention, reviewing research on temperamental individual differences and importantpathways to normal and pathological development. Pathologies of development may arise whenregulatory and reactive systems fail to reach the balance that allows for both self-expression andsocially acceptable behavior. It remains a challenge for our society during the next millennium toobtain the information necessary to design systems that allow a successful balance to be realizedby the largest possible number of children.

The focus of this article is on internalizing problems that are experienced by children andadolescents. We provide an historical perspective, selectively examine the current state ofknowledge, consider advances and gaps in what is known, and identify new research directions.Diagnosis, epidemiology, theory, and research first are considered separately for anxiety anddepressive disorders. These internalizing problems, however, whether clinical or subclinical,share many common features and show high comorbidity rates. We emphasize the importance ofsystematic analysis of comorbid anxiety and depression, including their comorbidity withexternalizing problems. This could lead to more valid classification of subtypes of internalizingproblems and further an understanding of the diverse conditions that constitute internalizeddistress. We highlight the need to study anxiety and depression within a developmentalpsychopathology framework, as well as to include both categorical and dimensional assessmentsof these problems in the same research designs. This will be essential for understanding thecomplex interplay of biological and environmental processes that contribute to the emergence,progression, and amelioration of internalizing problems over time.

The early emergence and developmental implications of externalizing behavior problems intoddlers and preschoolers are discussed with an emphasis on which young children are truly atrisk for continuing problems. The extant literature is reviewed with a focus on the stability ofearly externalizing behavior and the diverse pathways that young children, primarily boys, withearly-emerging problems may follow. Findings from a number of studies, both epidemiologicaland high risk, suggest that the small subgroup of boys with multiple risk factors that includeespecially high levels of early hyperactivity and aggression, and high levels of negative parentingand family stress, are most likely to evidence continuing problems at school entry.Sociodemographic and neighborhood influences are also discussed, as are implications for futureresearch and policy.

This article considers whether Asperger syndrome (AS) or high-functioning autism (HFA)necessarily leads to disability or whether AS/HFA simply leads to“difference.” It concludes that the term “difference” in relation toAS/HFA is a more neutral, value-free, and fairer description than terms such as“impairment,” “deficiency,” or “disability”; that theterm “disability” only applies to the lower functioning cases of autism; but that theterm “disability” may need to be retained for AS/HFA as long as the legalframework provides financial and other support only for individuals with a disability. Twomodels are summarized which attempt to define in what way individuals with AS/HFA are“different”: the central coherence model, and the folk psychology–folkphysics model. The challenge for research is to test the value of such models and to preciselycharacterize the differences in cognitive style.

This is a critical review of the literature related to the neurodevelopmental hypothesis ofschizophrenia which posits that the illness is related to abnormal brain development. The reviewfocuses on data deriving from clinical studies, and it is organized according to the life phase fromwhich the data were collected: conception and birth, infancy and childhood up to the onset of theillness, after illness onset, and postmortem. The neurodevelopmental hypothesis is supported byseveral pieces of evidence, including increased frequency of obstetric complications in patientswith schizophrenia; the presence of minor physical anomalies; the presence of neurological,cognitive, and behavioral dysfunction long before illness onset; a course and outcome of theillness itself that is incompatible in most cases with a degenerative illness; the stability of brainstructural measures over time; and the absence of postmortem evidence of neurodegeneration. Ahistorical perspective on how this research accumulated and a section addressing important areasof future investigation are also provided. We conclude that schizophrenia is certainly not adegenerative brain disorder, and that it is likely that a brain insult in utero or at birth plays a rolein its expression. Current evidence cannot completely exclude the role of environmentalvariables after birth. In addition, it is possible that other psychiatric disorders may also have aneurodevelopmental component.

This paper examines the conceptual and empirical connections between competence andpsychopathology, two historically rich traditions for the study of adaptation in development, andwhat might be gained from their integration. Historical roots of these two traditions are reviewed,then overlaps in their definition are considered, with a focus on the ways in which judgmentsabout competence enter into the nosology of mental disorders. DSM-IV is analyzed from theperspective of competence, and the debate about “harmful dysfunction” indefining mental disorder is discussed in relation to competence. Different models explaining theempirical associations of competence and psychopathology are delineated, and illustrativeempirical evidence is provided. Potential explanations include confounded concepts andmethods, symptoms undermining the effectiveness of adaptation in the environment, failures inage-salient developmental tasks leading to emotional and behavioral problems, transactionalinfluences, shared vulnerability or risk factors producing both kinds of difficulties, and morecomplex models. The potential benefits of integrating competence and psychopathology as twomajor approaches to adaptation are discussed in regard to theory, classification of mentaldisorder, research, and intervention.