* Tel.: #1-614-292-5622. E-mail address: glassman.13@osu.edu (M. Glassman). New Ideas in Psychology 18 (2000) 1}22 Negation through history: dialectics and human development Michael Glassman* Department of Human Development & Family Sciences, The Ohio State University, 135 Campbell Hall, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1295, USA Abstract A central tenet of this paper is that dialectics has served as a foundational basis for a number of important developmental theories. In spite of this, explicit discussion of dialectics as a general frame of reference for the study of human development has had an uneven history in the "eld of human development, especially in the United States. A number of theorists have o!ered reasons as to why dialectics has failed to achieve greater recognition in the "eld. This paper focuses on two possible interdependent reasons: (1) dialectics position in the history of ideas as an alternative to empiricism and rationalism, and (2) the lack of historical explication of dialectics as a tool for the study of human development. Historical explication is especially important, because it brings into focus the important relationship(s) between dialectics, history, and phenomenology. A limited historical analysis covers some of the philosophical underpinnings of dialectics; the way in which social theorists translated dialectics into issues of social and cognitive development in general; and the way in which two leading dialectical theorists applied these ideas to the study of human development in particular.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Dialectics has had an extraordinary in#uence on the study of human development. From ethologically based models of attachment (Ainsworth, 1993; Bowlby, 1980) to re-interpretations of accepted theoretical models that trend towards post-modernism (e.g., Glasersfeld, 1982), dialectics serves as one of the major frames of reference for 0732-118X/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 7 3 2 - 1 1 8 X ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 3 4 - 3