Life is a series of adventures – some good, and some bad. From birth, through childhood, and on to adulthood, each of us interacts with those around her or him. We think and feel. We dream and hope. We find our way, or get lost trying. Different individuals react to similar events in a variety of ways. There are perhaps as many responses to situations, as there are human beings on the Planet Earth. Yet we all share certain emotions. Some of these emotions are more powerful than others; the more powerful they are, the more they tend to shape an individual"s life; to form his or her character. A person who has known great happiness will tend to have a different outlook from a person who has known terrible sadness. The good people, and the good things, that we encounter can help us to feel good about ourselves, and about our place in society. While the bad people, and the bad things, that cross our paths, can make us feel afraid, or out of place. Sometimes the awful and painful experiences loom so large in our memories that we can scarcely bear the pain. We try to block out these things, or to forget about them completely. We develop coping mechanisms to deal with these seemingly impossible and unbearable situations. There are people for whom the negative forces in life have become so overwhelming that they cause that person to withdraw from society, and to act in ways that most consider to be unacceptable, or abnormal. Imagine a teenaged girl with partial amnesia. Imagine the same person as a grown woman with total paralysis and a complete ability to speak. What could have caused these "abnormal" responses? What chain of people and events, of actions and reactions, could have rendered such extreme developments a "logical" outcome? The developmental psychologist attempts to find out just that. Freud, Erikson, Bandura, Maslow, Piaget, and Vigotsky – each of these eminent psychologists formulated his own theory in regard to the development of the individual psyche.