According to many introductory psychology textbooks, Westerners are placing an increasingly high value on the welfare of their children. This humanistic cultural shift has not found its way into developmental psychology courses at the college level, leaving a vital gap in curriculum at many universities. Until now.

From a fresh, holistic perspective, psychology professor Eugene M. DeRobertis applies humanistic viewpoints in psychology to the study of child development. Unlike most child development texts that concentrate on the subdivisions of the child's personality, the observations and discussions here focus on the child as a whole. Drawing upon many schools of thought including American humanism, existential-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, neo-analytic theories, object-relations theory, self-psychology, and Gestalt psychology, Dr. DeRobertis opens an important dialogue to all teachers and students of psychology.

Packed with illustrations, empirical findings, references, and key terms and concepts, "Humanizing Child Developmental Theory" delivers an overarching theoretical framework for putting developmental issues into context. A significant and accessible contribution to developmental theorizing, this groundbreaking text gives psychology instructors and their students a relevant and much-needed humanistic approach to child development.

Though it is not well known, humanistic psychologists of various persuasions have been studying child development for over a century with very little recognition. The purpose of The Whole Child is to bring together Eugene M. DeRobertis's most recent efforts to establish the foundations of an existential-humanistic approach to child development and further develop existential-humanistic self-development theory (EHSDT). The philosophical-anthropological foundations of the book reach back as far as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Existential-humanistic child psychology is rooted in the works of individuals like Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, Alfred Adler, William Stern, Kurt Koffka, Heinz Werner, Kurt Lewin, Charlotte Buhler, D. W. Winnicott, Ernest Schachtel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Karen Horney, Carl Rogers, M. J. Langeveld, Heinz Kohut, and others. Contemporary applications in the current volume include the role of the imagination in child development, embodiment, well-being research, dynamic systems approaches to child development, and the impact of consumer culture on self-development. This book is the follow-up volume to his Humanizing Child Developmental Theory: A Holistic Approach (2008).

According to many introductory psychology textbooks, Westerners are placing an increasingly high value on the welfare of their children. This humanistic cultural shift has not found its way into developmental psychology courses at the college level, leaving a vital gap in curriculum at many universities. Until now.

From a fresh, holistic perspective, psychology professor Eugene M. DeRobertis applies humanistic viewpoints in psychology to the study of child development. Unlike most child development texts that concentrate on the subdivisions of the child's personality, the observations and discussions here focus on the child as a whole. Drawing upon many schools of thought including American humanism, existential-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, neo-analytic theories, object-relations theory, self-psychology, and Gestalt psychology, Dr. DeRobertis opens an important dialogue to all teachers and students of psychology.

Packed with illustrations, empirical findings, references, and key terms and concepts, "Humanizing Child Developmental Theory" delivers an overarching theoretical framework for putting developmental issues into context. A significant and accessible contribution to developmental theorizing, this groundbreaking text gives psychology instructors and their students a relevant and much-needed humanistic approach to child development.