The future of developmental theory will only in part be shaped by topical matters. Of greater importance is the changing status of theory in the psychology of development. Recent scholarship has suggested that psychologists can no longer assume that development is synonymous with progress nor that psychologists can pronounce on development `in general'. Such recognitions radically alter the status of what psychologists can say about development, highlighting the central role played by irrationality in developmental thinking. On this ground, I argue that developmentalists must acknowledge the poetic or `mimetic' constitution of their language when dealing with others, whether in theory, research or practice. This acknowledgement suggests that psychologists will need to review both the putative child-centredness of their thinking about development and, more generally, their own subjective orientation to others in research and practice.
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