All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 Introduction—The Value of Theories

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture introduces the major objectives of the course. It allows students to assess where they stand on major issues regarding human development. The lecture then discusses the value of scientific theories for understanding development, and the criteria for judging whether a theory is valuable.

  • S01E02 The Early History of Child Study

    • The Great Courses

    Prior to and during the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, people often showed a lack of humane concern for children. This translated into an absence of systematic study of child development. Concern for, and evaluation of, children resulted in part from the influence of a few physicians and religious leaders.

  • S01E03 Two Worldviews—Locke vs. Rousseau

    • The Great Courses

    Two major philosophers, both concerned with humane child rearing and education, changed the prevailing perception of children. John Locke espoused the "mechanistic" worldview: children are neutral ("blank slates") and function like machines. Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed the "organismic" worldview: children are good, and function like organisms.

  • S01E04 Later History—Becoming Scientific

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture traces the application of scientific method and theory to the study of human development. The first scientists to study children functioned like naturalists, simply observing and describing children's development.

  • S01E05 Freud's Psychodynamic Theory

    • The Great Courses

    Freud's psychodynamic theory caused a revolution in thinking about human development. We discuss his history, theory, and his reliance on such concepts as psychic energy.

  • S01E06 How We Gain Contact with Reality—The Ego

    • The Great Courses

    Our discussion of Freud's theory continues by focusing on the nonadaptive nature of the unconscious id, the development of the ego and its accompanying secondary process thinking, and the subsequent development of the superego.

  • S01E07 Freud's Psycho-Sexual Stages

    • The Great Courses

    This final lecture on Freud discusses his concept of erogenous zones, the five psychosexual stages—oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital—and the fixations that may occur during each, and the Oedipus complex and its resolution.

  • S01E08 Erikson's Psycho-Social Theory

    • The Great Courses

    We first discuss neo-Freudian revisions in Freud's theory. We then discuss Erikson's history, including his experience with his own identity crisis, and describe how his stages of development are based on the need to develop mastery and personal identity through a series of crises in one's life cycle.

  • S01E09 Erikson's Early Stages

    • The Great Courses

    The first four stages of Erikson's theory provide the foundation of development for the child: developing trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, and industry versus inferiority.

  • S01E10 Identity and Intimacy

    • The Great Courses

    Erikson was the first to propose two pivotal stages of development after childhood. During adolescence, Stage 5 is a crisis of developing identity versus role confusion. Stage 6, in young adulthood, is a crisis of developing intimacy versus isolation. The lecture concludes with differences between women and men in developing identity and intimacy.

  • S01E11 Erikson's Later Stages—Adult Development

    • The Great Courses

    Erikson's last two stages occur in adulthood and old age. Stage 7 is a crisis of developing generativity versus stagnation, and Stage 8 is a crisis of developing ego integrity versus despair. The last stage connects all the issues with which a person has already dealt.

  • S01E12 Bowlby and Ainsworth's Attachment Theory

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture introduces attachment theory by describing the personal histories and research of its creators. We continue with a "secure base," for which the theory was famous, and an attachment system for the adaptation of the species.

  • S01E13 Bowlby and Ainsworth's Attachment Theory

    • The Great Courses

    Bowlby rejected Freudian psychodynamic theory as inadequate to explain attachment. He turned instead to ethology theory, and its concept of innate releasing mechanisms. We discuss the allure of babyish features and their role in attachment, and attachment in the first year of life.

  • S01E14 Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture describes the normal development of a secure attachment, and Ainsworth's "strange situation" task—the most popular assessment for secure attachment. We examine insecure attachments: what they are, how they may predict several psychopathological problems in development, and causes.

  • S01E15 Early Attachments and Adult Relationships

    • The Great Courses

    Our discussion concludes with relations between early attachment and later relationships. Bowlby developed the "internal working model" of a child's attachment, which provides constant security, and influences subsequent attachments. Early attachments influence adult romantic relationships.

  • S01E16 Bandura's Social Learning Theory

    • The Great Courses

    A fourth major theory, Albert Bandura's social learning theory, added a cognitive focus to learning theory. It showed how the influence of what one expects to happen is more important than what does happen. This focus led to the concept of "vicarious reinforcement."

  • S01E17 Bandura's Self-Efficacy Theory

    • The Great Courses

    Bandura extended the cognitive focus of his theory by arguing that a person's development of self-efficacy (or belief that one can have an effect on one's environment) determines the tasks one attempts and the skills one develops.

  • S01E18 Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture introduces the most important theorist in the field of child development, Jean Piaget. It describes Piaget's history and his attempt to combine naturalist biology and philosophy to create a field called genetic epistemology (how we come to know what we know).

  • S01E19 Piaget's Early Stages

    • The Great Courses

    Piaget's sequence of four major stages describes how we progress from infant to adult intelligence. Symbol use emerges by the end of infancy, the sensory-motor period. Preschoolers master symbolic skills in the pre-operational period.

  • S01E20 Concrete Operations

    • The Great Courses

    The discussion of Piaget's theory continues by focusing on what preschoolers can and can't do, and how the five-to-seven year shift is a pivotal transition to Piaget's third stage, the concrete-operational period.

  • S01E21 Piaget's Last Stage

    • The Great Courses

    This lecture begins with a description of Piaget's Stage 4, the formal-operational period. This is a time of "idealistic" thinking. We consider examples of formal-operational logic, abstraction, and hypothetical thinking.

  • S01E22 Vygotsky's Cognitive-Mediation Theory

    • The Great Courses

    Lev Vygotsky was practically unknown to Western thinkers until recently, but his theoretical influence on development and education is constantly increasing. As a Russian theorist he believed that Marxism could provide a foundation for a better theory of psychological development.

  • S01E23 Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

    • The Great Courses

    Vygotsky argued that a person's level of development is not a specific point but a range or zone. This "zone of proximal development" shifts over time. We examine examples of "scaffolding," an important notion in education.

  • S01E24 Conclusion—Our Nature and Development

    • The Great Courses

    This concluding lecture uses the allegory of blind men describing an elephant to illustrate how different theories might give a partial or even false understanding of human nature and development. We discuss ways to integrate the major theories, using the example of gender role development. We end with a reprise: Where does the student now stand regarding major issues of human development?