CHAPTER I Development and Psychopathology 1 DANTE CICCHETTI WHAT IS DEVELOPMENTAL DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS 12 PSYCHOPATHOLOGY? 1 Multiple Levels of Analysis 14 HISTORICAL ROOTS OF DEVELOPMENTAL RESILIENCE 14 PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 5 TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH 15 DEFINITIONAL PARAMETERS OF DEVELOPMENTAL PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION 15 PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 7 CONCLUSION 17 CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND PRINCIPLES 8 REFERENCES 18 Risk and Protective Factors 8 Contextual Influences 10 The Mutual Interplay between Normality and Psychopathology 11 In this chapter, we discuss the principles inherent to a de- velopmental psychopathology perspective. We want to un- derscore that, if taken in isolation, many aspects of a developmental approach to psychopathology can be found in other fields that focus on the study of individuals with L I high-risk conditions and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the incorporation and integration of previously discrete con- I cepts serve to set developmental psychopathology apart from other disciplines. In particular, a focus on the inter- play between normality and pathology, the growing accep- tance of the importance of a multiple-levels-of-analysis and multidomain approach, and an emphasis on the utiliza- tion of a developmental framework for comprehending adaptation and maladaptation across the life course are among those elements that are central to a developmental psychopathology approach. Whereas traditional viewpoints conceptualize maladaptation and disorder as inherent to the individual, the developmental psychopathology frame- work places them in the dynamic relationship between the individual and the internal and external contexts (Cic- chetti, 1987; Sameroff, 2000). Rather than competing with existing theories and facts, the developmental psychopath- ology perspective provides a broad, integrative framework within which the contributions of separate disciplines can be finally realized in the larger context of understanding individual development and functioning. It is our convic- tion that the principles of developmental psychopathology provide a much-needed conceptual scaffolding for facilitat- ing this multidisciplinary integration. To begin, we describe principles that have guided the field of developmental psychopathology. We then examine the historical origins of the field. We next explicate the def- initional parameters of the discipline and discuss issues that are integral to research conducted within a develop- mental psychopathology framework. We conclude by de- scribing some important future directions for prevention, research on interventions, and research on developmental psychopathology. WHAT IS DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY? Developmental psychopathology is an evolving scientific discipline whose predominant focus is elucidating the in- terplay among the biological, psychological, and social- contextual aspects of normal and abnormal development across the life span (Cicchetti, 1993; Cicchetti & Toth, 1998; Rutter & Sroufe, 2000; Sameroff, 2000). In their seminal article, Sroufe and Rutter (1984, p. 18) proposed that developmental psychopathology could be defined as "the study of the origins and course of individual patterns of behavioral maladaptation, whatever the age of onset, what- ever the causes, whatever the transformations in behavioral2 Development and Psychopathology manifestation, and however complex the course of the de- velopmental pattern may be." Relatedly, the Institute of Medicine (1989) produced a report, entitled Research on Children and Adolescents with Mental, Behavioral, and De- velopmental Disorders, written from the integrative per- spective of developmental psychopathology and highly influential in the development of the National Plan for Re- search on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders (National Advisory Mental Health Council, 1990; see also Jensen et al., 1993). In its report, the Institute stated that a devel- opmental psychopathology approach should take into ac- count "the emerging behavioral repertoire, cognitive and language functions, social and emotional processes, and changes occurring in anatomical structures and physiologi- cal processes of the brain" (p. 14). Given the intimate relation between the study of nor- mality and psychopathology, theoreticians and researchers who predominantly focus on normal processes also espouse similar perspectives about the nature of development. For example, Cairns (1990, p. 42) conceptualized the study of normal development as necessitating a holistic, synthetic science: "Maturational, experiential, and cultural contri- butions are inseparably coalesced in ontogeny. Hence, de- velopmental studies should be multilevel, concerned with ontogenetic integration, and employ person-oriented as well as variable-oriented analyses." In a related vein, Gottlieb (1991, p. 7; see also Gottlieb, Wahlsten, & Lickliter, 1998) depicted individual normal development as characterized by an increase of complexity of organization (i.e., the emergence of new structural and functional properties and competen- cies) at all levels of analysis (e.g., molecular, subcellular, cel- lular, organismic) as a consequence of horizontal and vertical coactions among the organisms' parts, including organism- environment coactions. For Gottlieb (1992), horizontal coactions take place at the same level of analysis (e.g., gene-gene, cell-cell, person- person, environment-environment), whereas vertical coac- tions occur at a different level of analysis (e.g., cell-tissue, organism-environment, behavioral activity-nervous system) and are reciprocal. As such, vertical coactions are capable of influencing developmental organization from either lower-to-higher or higher-to-lower levels of the developing system (Gottlieb, 1992). Thus, epigenesis is viewed as prob- abilistic rather than predetermined, with the bidirectional nature of genetic, neural, behavioral, and environmental in- fluence over the course of individual development captur- ing the essence of Gottlieb's conception of probabilistic epigenesis. In an earlier period, the influential psychiatrist Adolf Meyer proffered a psychobiological orientation to normality and psychopathology that bore striking similar- ity to Gottlieb's