Human Development and the Imagination

In this book, volume 1 of 3 about Human Development and the Imagination, the concept of the imagination is front and center in chapters 1 to 4 as its historic origins in Hellenic Philosophy are traced through the field of Philosophical Ethics up through more contemporary times. In doing so, these chapters provide the first of many interfaces between the imagination and the process of human development. Then, in Chapters 5 to 14, the study of the imagination reduces to Psychology's domain, and is carried forward as the Life and Times of the Aesthetic Imagination. These chapters promote a psychologically founded understanding of the imagination, consistent with the tenets of cognitive science. The chapters conjoin, in evolving scope, the imagination and the developmental process. In so doing this process sequences a major developmental postulate and ten sub-postulates; these chapters enclose various developmental markers, such as the "Child as Creative Picture-Maker," "Modal Logic," "the Narrative Self," and "Style."

The book began with research from just the philosophical perspective; yet instead of uncovering a clear, linear timeline, it revealed a considerable heritage of related, but alternative knowledge domains like psychology and theology, and various forms of mysticism across the centuries. The impact of these knowledge domains on human development and their relative treatment of the imagination became the focus of this work. While this led me further away from my original thesis, I came to a deeper understanding of what moves our internal human development. Hopefully the reader will too.

Dr. Jerome Frazier was born to loving parents in Des Moines, Iowa in 1932. The youngest of three children, he attended Dowling High School followed by the Maryknoll Seminary and a myriad of graduate programs. He obtained his Master's Degree in Social Work from Saint Louis University and his Doctoral Degree from Washington University at St. Louis. In 1956 he married his love, Nancy Barry, together raising five children whilst pursuing their lives. Little did any of them realize they would each help to inspire his signature work – Human Development and the Imagination. Supervised by his mentor Dr. Joseph O'Dale, Dr. Frazier treated patients in private practice until he began teaching as an Assistant Professor at Saint Louis University in their Graduate School of Social Work. Later beginning his own private practice while maintaining his teaching, he discovered the synergistic symmetry that would govern his life, each part of his life contributing to the whole. After retiring from teaching and his clinical practice, his work on the present manuscript began in earnest as he shared with the reader his many life lessons. His conversational writing style makes his developmental journey unusually accessible to the reader.