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LIVES ACROSS TIME describes a 30-year study of 76 individuals from birth to adulthood. The book narrates their varied life paths and the influence of their families and communities on their development. We place the results into the categories of those whose lives are fairly continuous from early childhood, and those whose lives are not; those whose lives exceeded expectations in the face of early troubled parenting, and those who did not fulfill the promise of initially sound parenting and healthy emotional growth – typically because of subsequent trauma – and developed psychiatric syndromes. While life histories may fall into configurations with shared characteristics, by listening psychoanalytically we found something basic in the stories that parents and their now adult children tell about themselves: the individual story is humanizing and compelling. Letting the subjects speak at length brought them alive for us as researchers. There was a sense of awe in watching the children’s inner worlds evolve over time. By narrating the participants’ own voices we hope to share the wonder we experienced so the reader’s journey also becomes one of discovery.

The psychoanalytically oriented Brody longitudinal study has followed the psychological development of 76 individuals from birth to age 30. Ten suffered severe maltreatment in childhood in the form of rejection and/or physical abuse at the hands of one or both parents. This report describes the effects of child abuse on the emerging personalities of the children, as well as on their adult personalities and mental health. Specifi cally, as adults the maltreated children had signifi cantly more psychiatric illness (typically depressions and anxiety disorders), less mature psychological defense mechanisms, more insecure mental representations of attachment to their parents as indicated by the adult attachment interview, and a lower Global Assessment of Functioning than their well-treated counterparts. Additionally, their prevailing moods were joyless. Case examples show the emergence of symptoms, personality disorders, and defenses over time, as well as the workings of ameliorating infl uences. Several of the maltreated children made relatively successful adaptations as adults, indicating children's potential for resilience. Resilience, however, may be a superfi cial concept, for, in this series of cases, seemingly adequate coping in formerly mistreated children always came at the price of emotional vulnerability and compromised potential.

This chapter shows different internalizing mechanisms— marked by different forms of self-struggle, defense mechanisms, and management of feelings of love and anger— that resulted in specific symptoms such as depression, and in specific personality formations such as obsessive-compulsiveness and pathological narcissism. It discusses three mostly suffered inwardly in childhood, each one also lashed out at times. Their lives also illustrate processes seen in the whole group of internalizing children and provide a picture of the family experiences that are fertile ground for producing these problems. Three internalizers are Nolan, Ulla and Reina. In adult life Reina is midway between Nolan and Ulla. Nolan and Reina consciously experience their unhappiness. Reina protects herself somewhat from full awareness of her suffering through her professional sublimations. Reina's choice of research is also very interesting for she is trying to learn about human existence and gender-related experiences by studying microscopic pieces of human material.

This chapter describes few men and women who are living very fulfilling lives. Their experiences show what parents can do to launch their children into such lives. In spite of the parents' caution, Nicholas had internalized their profound apprehension which their best efforts couldn't conceal. The anxiety had broken through Nick's own defences leading him to feel pain and fear going to school for several days. Nick was most comfortable in the world of ideas; for athletics he had picked a non-contact sport, swimming. Tadana found her way to maturity in a family with religiously devout parents who had emigrated from South America and had little formal education. Thin, dark haired, with a patient demeanor, Tatiana works for the New York Public Interest Foundation reporting on how government policies affect consumers. Parental empathy was present in a very large measure in the families of the six children. It contains elements of calmness, thoughtfulness, attentiveness and warmth.

The prototypical studies are Wemer's birth to adulthood survey of economically disadvantaged children on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai. E. J. Anthony and B. Cohler's overview of longitudinal studies of children whose mothers were schizophrenic or severely depressed; and L. Murphy and A. Moriarty's examination of children growing up in seemingly normal families in a small Midwestern American town. Anthony and Cohler learned that the high-achieving offspring of schizophrenic mothers were not truly invulnerable, that they paid a price for their struggles. The children who coped best shared at least some of the following eight characteristics: positive peer relationships, humor, physical soundness, reflection, goal orientation, good control over feelings, ability to comfort or soothe themselves, and creativity. These major studies of resilience and coping have been instrumental in helping social scientists grasp the many factors involved when some children do well in the face of adversity, and to understand that the children's successes often come with psychological scars.

This chapter looks at the kinds of things that can go wrong in a child's growth, how damage actually takes place in a child's developing psyche, and how that damage usurps the promise and hopes of infancy. It examines the powerful role of external trauma in undermining one boy's early growth, and how a girl's internalization of complex family influences, seemingly benign on the surface, badly affected her future. The chapter presents the case of Oscar. Oscar's mother's description of him at kindergarten age, differing somewhat from the observer's and teachers, was also accurate. She emphasized her little boy's good sense of humor, affection, inquisitiveness, and energy. Oscar's difficulty with spontaneity has led him to be very inhibited and conflicted about sexuality. Oscar's life graphically illustrates how external trauma—crepeated encounters with death, violence, and the loss of friends—can deplete hope and trust.

This chapter discusses two of the extremely active children closely from birth to age 30. Six individuals’ names include Frank, Dafna, Kevin, Farley, Kandis, Chuck. The life courses of these six individuals illustrate a series of phenomena: psychological mechanisms involved in externalization of distress, problems in the families of the hyperactive children, severe in comparison to those in die successful, the manner in which the children's symptoms are a response to perturbation of early parent-child interactions. It also illustrate psychological defenses externalizing children erect to manage unhappiness, and the manner in which symptoms and defenses endure and transform over time, affecting the adult personalities and lives of the participants. Corporal punishment was frequent for all six of the externalizing children. The spankings— coupled with the children's desires to please their parents— leashed several of the children emotionally to their parents well into adulthood.