Developmental psychopathology "Normal Development Which Went the Wrong Way" S

Abstract

The article describes some basic assumptions of contemporary developmental psychopathology and their relationship to developmental psychology, the clinical psychology of childhood and adolescence and ihe descriptions of psychopathological phenomena in general. The purpose of the paper is to describe some current bends and problems which within developmental psychopathology are individually emphasized and shaped into hypothesis which need to be confirmed by investigations. Developmental psychopathology builds its ideas on empirical and conceptual demands to solve these problems and in this sense it represents an approach which, in investigating and explaining the origins and the process different forms of disorder came into being, takes into consideration the transformations in the phenomenology or the disorder with regard to the mutual interaction of different factors (age, sex, risk and preventive factors, multi-determinancy and interaction in the explanation of etiology, and others). Developmental psychopathology promotes a dynamic and holistic approach to the understanding of psychopathology and offers numerous guidelines for research in this field but also for everyday clinical work.