3-1063).
Theories of human development often tend to view people as either active or passive in interactions with their environments (Cohen, 1992, p. 22). A passive concept of human development is behaviorism (Sugarman, 1991, p. 20). Behaviorism emphasizes the critical significance of one's environment to the overall development of the individual (Turner and Helms, 1991, p. 8). Active concepts of human development, by contrast with passive concepts, hold that individuals are not passive beings, but, rather, are capable of actively governing their own development. An active concept of human development is the cognitive development theory.
There exist a number of protocols for dividing, or staging, the human life cycle. One approach, genetic maturation, to the break the life cycle into infancy, the Oedipal period, the juvenile period, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and old age (Lidz, 1968, pp. 76-76). Sigmund Freud considered human development within the context of psychosexual development (Hill and Humphrey, 1992, pp. 6-7). Freud's developmental stages were oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital (Lerner, 1991, pp. 294-297). Erik Erikson (1982, pp. 15-24), working with Freudian psychosexual theory as a basis, developed the psychosocial theory of human development. Erikson's epigenetic principle led to the concept of psychosocial life-stages that tended to meld Freud's psychosexual stages with the genetic-maturation stages. Erikson's psychosocial life-stages were oral-sensory, anal-musculature, genital-locomotor, latency, puberty and adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, and maturity (Lerner, 1991, pp. 310-318).
Extensive research was initiated and conducted in the 1960s relative to the relationship between stress and life events. One research study (Rabkin and Struening, 1976, pp. 31-54) developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). Several studies were subsequently conducted, using the SRRS ...