Defines development as the translation of potentiality into actuality and equates that translation with creativity;
Describes the nature of human potential and recognizes the impossibility of establishing its finitude;
Establishes two broad categories of potentialities — biological and psychological;
Identifies proper nutrition as the essential element in the development of biological potentialities and learning as the key factor in the release of psychological potentialities;
Affirms the importance of early experience in shaping subsequent developmental phenomena and enunciates the hueristic value of the concepts of critical or sensitive periods, stages and sequences;
Stresses the importance of learning how to learn (learning competence) as the ultimate source of independence and confidence;
Defines learning competence as the conscious ability to differentiate aspects of experience, integrate them into novel patterns, and generalize them to other situations and sets forth the proposition that differentiation, integration and generalization constitute a trio of interrelated processes that defines a developmental unit of change — a stage, (sequences of stages being the primary means by which increasing complexity of function and structure is built up and integrated through hierarchical organization);
Establishes five categories of psychological potentialities—psycho-motor, perceptual, cognitive, affective, and volitional;
Confirms interaction with the environment as the means by which development is sustained;
Accounts for the importance of the perpetual introduction of some novelty into the environment as a primary means of creating disequilibrium (or disparity) between developmental level and experience thereby compelling new patterns of interaction which in turn facilitates the actualization of psychological potentialities;
Categorizes interactions in terms of their power to facilitate the development of learning competence and the maintenance of biological integrity;
Fixes three basic categories of environment (physical, human, and the unknown) consistent with the ontological levels outlined in the philosophy and establishes the Self (personal identity) as the micro-cosmic reflection of the three environments and the most constant part of the environment it experiences;
Explains the emergence of personal identify (character development) in terms of value formation and defines values as the relatively enduring structurings of actualized potentialities (patterned uses of energy available to the organism);
Explains how information about the environments, held as beliefs, affects the structuring; Identifies developmental universals which provide a framework for the planning and implementation of educational programs cross culturally;
Identifies three value sub-systems (material, social, and religious/aesthetic) each of which is associated with a category of the three basic environments;
Explains three analogous higher-order competencies (technological, moral and spiritual/philosophical) which rest on the value sub-subsystems;
Defines the structural and functional reality of personal identity—the Self—as the three value systems combined into an integrated totality on which depends the personal effectance of the self—'self-competence', analogously defined as the combination of the higher-order competencies;
Explicates the relationship between culture and personality formation, particularly as it is transmitted by parents and the family;
Provides a general scheme for understanding the nature of pathology and its etiology (both biological and psychological), sets forth the conditions for the prevention of mental illness, character disorders, delinquency, and criminality, and is generative of testable propositions concerning therapy and rehabilitation.