Psychodynamics and developmental psychopathology

Developmental psychopathology is the study of 'typical' and 'atypical' (including psychopathological) development alongside one another. There are new lines of evidence to suggest that psychodynamic approaches, including those of Freud and Klein that posit mental representations of internal figures who are experienced in different ways, may have importance for understanding personality disorder. Other avenues of research, including those into early childhood autism and the transmission of psychopathology to infants, point to the significance of intersubjective (i.e. interpersonal) experience for mental development. There is reason to believe that especially important is the human capacity to identify with other people.