Chapter Introduction

His mother called him Adi and showered him with affection, but his father was not so kind. As his sister later recalled, “Adi challenged my father to extreme harshness and got his sound thrashing every day…. How often on the other hand did my mother caress him and try to obtain with her kindness where the father could not succeed with harshness.” Although his father wanted him to become a civil servant, Adi’s true love was art, and his mother quietly encouraged that gentler interest. Adi was just 18 years old when his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he was heartbroken when she died.

But Adi had little time for grieving. As he later wrote, “Poverty and hard reality compelled me to make a quick decision. I was faced with the problem of somehow making my own living.” Adi resolved to make that living as an artist. He applied to art school but he was flatly rejected. Motherless and penniless, Adi wandered the city streets for 5 long years, sleeping on park benches, living in homeless shelters, and eating in soup kitchens, while trying desperately to sell his sketches and watercolors.

In just 10 years, Adi had achieved the fame he desired, and more. Today his paintings are sought by collectors, who pay significant sums to acquire them. The largest collection of Adi’s work is owned by the U.S. government, which keeps the pieces locked in a room in Washington, DC. The curator of the collection, Marylou Gjernes, once remarked, “I often looked at them and wondered, ‘what if? What if he had been accepted into art school? Would World War II have happened?’” The curator’s question makes sense because while the artist’s mother called him Adi, the rest of us know him as Adolf Hitler.

Adi painted in many styles, including the precise and well-structured watercolor shown here. In 2013, one of his paintings sold at auction for $40,000.

INTERFOTO/ALAMY
MAKSYM BONDACHUK/SHUTTER STOCK

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE THE GREATEST mass murderer of the 20th century as a gentle child who loved to draw, as a compassionate adolescent who cared for his ailing mother, or as a dedicated young adult who endured cold and hunger for the sake of art? After all, you didn’t begin as the person you are today, and odds are that you aren’t yet in finished form. From birth to infancy, from childhood to adolescence, from young adulthood to old age, human beings change over time. Their development includes both dramatic transformations and striking consistencies in the way they look, think, feel, and act. Developmental Psychology is the study of continuity and change across the life span, and in the last century, developmental psychologists have discovered some truly amazing things about this metamorphosis.

From infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood, people exhibit both continuity and change.

COURTESY OF DANIEL GILBERT

SIDNEY HARRIS/THE NEW YORKER COLLECTION/CARTOONBANK.COM

Let’s start where you started. We’ll first examine the 9-month period between conception and birth and see how prenatal events set the stage for everything to come. Then we’ll examine childhood, during which children must learn how to think about the world and their relationship to it, to understand and bond with others, and to tell the difference between right and wrong. Next, we’ll examine a relatively new invention called adolescence, which is the stage at which children become both independent and sexual. Finally, we’ll examine adulthood, the stage at which people typically leave their parents, find mates, and have children.