The psychological development of girls and women: Rethinking change in time

The Psychological Development of Girls and Women: Rethinking Change in Time. Sheila Greene. New York: Routledge. 2003. 167 pp. ISBN 0-415-17862-2. $27.95 (hardcover). Developmental Psychology, long considered a policy science, has traditionally focused on individual development and progression. But what is that progression aiming toward? How influential are the elements of prediction and control? In The Psychological Development of Girls and Women: Rethinking Change in Time, Sheila Greene argues for a critical development perspective that she believes would provide the framework for understanding the psychological development of girls and women in ways that mainstream developmental psychology has heretofore failed to provide. Rather than relying on the traditional view of development as determined, given, universal, and natural, Greene suggests an understanding that views development as historically and culturally contingent and emergent. She stresses that the typically andocentric nature of traditional developmental psychology must be acknowledged and eliminated if we are to have an understanding of feminine psychology that benefits women and eliminates gender blindness and bias. And although she recognizes that there may be something to be gained from observing a particular phenomenon at a specific juncture in time, Greene presses us to consider the "significance of the passage of time, of timing, age, growth, aging and mortality" (p. 1) with regard to the psychological development of girls and women. As with other professional and powerful traditional theories, Developmental Theory has previously been impervious to challenges and immune to introspection. This can be both dangerous and derisive. Greene argues that many of the traditional theories are inapplicable to women or restrict their potential because of their parochial and patriarchal nature. As an example, from the standpoint of goal setting, the ways in which women fashion their short- and long-term "life goals" is often directly related to the way that girls and women tend to internalize the expectations set by society (e.g., the understanding of what it means to be a "good" mother and a "good" wife). The examination of the tensions and debates within developmental psychology is, according to Greene, an antidevelopmental developmental psychology (p. 37). The fact is, no one grows up or develops in a historical or social vacuum. Class, race, culture, and gender are all defining and integral aspects of development and, according to Greene, despite claims of impartiality and freedom from ideology, psychology has been employed frequently and uncritically as a discipline of social control in schools, mental hospitals, prisons, and even, most insidiously, in the home (p. 27). Greene engages the binary opposition of the nature versus nurture/biological versus environmental debates in her discussion of "biology as destiny," which she claims ignores the possibility of personal agency, as both subject and agent, and disallows individuals the ability and right to reconstruct their own histories and shape their own futures. Instead of erring on the side of either extreme, the answer, says Greene, is to think in terms of interaction. She also acknowledges the importance of keeping an open mind about the extent to which our pasts may influence who we are in the present. In the end, although we are motivated by our need for predictability and continuity, it is clear that we can neither disregard nor overemphasize history when we are theorizing development and the construction of self. Greene argues that within the disciplines labeled "psychology of women" and "feminist psychology"-and, by extension, the interdisciplinary field of women's studies-there is a need for a (more) clearly articulated developmental perspective (p. 36). She devotes an entire chapter to an examination of the traditional theories and subtheories that discuss girls' and women's psychology with reference to origins, formation, socialization, assumed developmental pathways, tasks or goals, and changes with age or in time, and another chapter to theories written from a woman-centered perspective. …