Finishing Touches to Developmental Stages

Robertson, Gary. Do I Hafta Grow Up? The Adult's Guide to Unfinished Business of Childhood. Standard Edition. c2009. ISBN 978-0-557-06268-3. $29.95.

Almost half the length of the original edition of Do I Hafta Grow Up?, published two years earlier, the Standard Edition of this provocative work, produced in response to reader demand, is just as insightful as the original text. Presenting a healing model that integrates aspects of medicine, psychology and religion, Robertson, Director of the Springs Foundation explores the need for healing experienced by many who have not yet developed fully. Do I Hafta Grow Up? promotes understanding of what the problems are; how to define them; where they originate; and how to access who we are as bodies, minds and spirits.

After providing examples of problems caused by incomplete childhood development, Robertson explains the origins of common connection issues that might persist throughout further development. He stresses the importance of fulfilling the primary goals of the first five years of life: becoming individuated in the first 18 months; separating from our parents by the end of our first two years; gathering information in our third year that enables us to establish personal power in year four; and evolving our own identity about age five.

Sourcing the sociological ramifications of problems in the incomplete development of the individual’s mental, spiritual and religious consciousness, Robertson explains how, by our becoming more aware of what has stultified and stagnated our progress, we can choose to free ourselves from extrinsic pressures and prescriptions.

Robertson shows how his teaching experience in the field of human relations has led him to evolve an understanding of how the application of energy psychology can release us from our karmic overload. He indicates a way in which to resolve issues left unresolved in previous lifetimes, rounding off his text with an annotated bibliography of works that provide additional information on some of the methodologies to which he refers in the course of his discussion.

With the tone of the Standard Edition being more concentrated and focused, due to its being more condensed than the author’s Signature Edition, Do I Hafta Grow Up? The Adult's Guide to Unfinished Business of Childhood Standard Edition retains the logical and accessible flow of the original. … And yes, BTW, Robertson does, once again, answer his own question both cogently and clearly. Lois C. Henderson