This volume is the first in "The Course of Life" series which contains original contributions from an international group of scientists and clinicians who have produced much of the current knowledge about the phases of human personality development. These contributions cover the continuum of human development from the prenatal phase through childhood and adulthood. Dimensions of normal development, as well as the emergence of adaptive and pathologic propensities, are discussed for each developmental phase. Chapters in this first volume demonstrate the breadth of the psychoanalytic approach, including genetic and constitutional individual differences in infants; the role these differences play in early affect dispositions, relationship patterns, and personality structures; their continuing internalization in the context of maturational and developmental factors; and the way in which favorable early development creates a foundation for basic personality functions and later adaptive roles of conflict, affect, and anxiety in organizing the experiences of early childhood. A few chapters focus predominantly on the physical, neurophysiological substrata of behavior, attempting to understand how organization of the earliest experiences becomes the basis for later ego functions. Other papers bridge these conceptualizations with a more traditional psychoanalytic understanding of infancy and early childhood, thus illustrating the multiple determinants operative in early development. (Author/RH)