Psychopathology and development: II. Childhood experiences and personality development

Concepts and empirical findings are reviewed with regard to personality development and to the role of childhood experiences in that process. It is concluded that personality development cannot be reduced to the stabilisation of behavioural traits, to the production of a fixed personality structure or to the acquisition of social-cognitive skills, although there is some form of personality organisation in terms of habits, attitudes, concepts and styles of behaviour. Personality development takes place in a social context, with both continuities and discontinuities stemming from maturational and experiential factors and interactions between them. Chains of indirect linkages result from complex patterns of circular processes involving reciprocal interactions between children and their environments. No single mechanism is responsible and no one theory provides an explanation.