Who are we? Or perhaps more accurately, why are we who we are? That depends on whom you ask, but most people will agree that our identity is largely determined by our experiences. This includes personal highlights, such as first love, but also personal crises and dealing with our deepest fears. Basically, what matters most to our personal journey through life is the strategies we use to master such very special challenges in the first place. When we are successful, to what factors do we attribute this success - our own ability or mere luck? When we are in a crisis, do we rather sit on our helplessness or do we ask someone for help?
You may now be surprised to learn that such questions revolve less around the individual than they might seem. How we deal with conflict has primarily to do with who we learn from and who we can rely on completely. Developmental psychology is concerned with precisely such questions and with what we can best do from a scientific perspective both to accompany children on their journey through life and to understand and ultimately master our own life crises.
