Fundamentals of Human Development, Religion, and Spirituality

A central feature of both religious and psychological understandings of the human condition is that people are not static entities. Life from birth to death involves many changes in our physical, psychological, and spiritual makeup. In psychology, this issue has been explored through two major schools of thought—the psychodynamic tradition (see Chapter 5) and the cognitive-structuralist school. In this chapter, we will look at variations on the structural approach. In the following two chapters, we will expand our understanding of religious and spiritual development during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood by considering the empirical literature and some other approaches in the context of these theories.