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«Personal growth» and «Personal development» — as concepts, these are quite different things, but in practice few people distinguish between them. Even experts call them, confusing, and so and so.
Growth is called quantitative changes, and if in the process of changes something a person becomes more (confidence, strength, reaction speed) despite the fact that these changes occurred from the inside, naturally, in this case they speak of the process of personal growth. For example, all children, by virtue of natural biological maturation and the cares of their parents, grow up in their psychological and educational level to kindergarten, then to school, school raises them to college, then life pushes them to subsequent adulthood … This is natural, or passive personal growth.
Of course, in the process of growth, qualitative leaps—transformations—can sometimes occur. The caterpillar grows and suddenly turns into a chrysalis, and the chrysalis into a fluttering butterfly. Likewise, the child grows and grows, and now in the place of the baby — a teenager, then — a young man, and after a while the young man will become an adult. However, these transformations are not natural growth in their pure form, real Mowglis remain only little animals, children do not turn into humans by themselves. The child turns into a man only under the condition of the educative influence of human culture. Accordingly, it was already not only growth, it was already the development of a person and personality.
What is development?
We remember the classic: growth is quantitative changes, development is qualitative changes. If you see the book Personality Development of Preschool Children, you know that you will find there a description of how a child’s personality changes qualitatively from year to year, what happens when a child develops neoplasms. The main questions to the topic of the results of personality development are “What neoplasms can be said to be qualitatively new?”, “How can you check that development has really happened?”, “Is it possible to talk about the level of development of a particular personality, compare people by level personal development! and “What are the pinnacles of personality development?”
Unlike quantitative growth, development refers to qualitative changes. If in the process of change a person becomes different in something important, qualitative changes took place with him, they speak of the process of personality development. In practice, in life, the source of these qualitative changes is usually external influences: the boy was ill-mannered, they worked with him — and the boy became different — well-mannered. The girl was uneducated, but she went to school, studied, and became an educated girl. Qualitative changes in us do not fall from the sky and do not spontaneously arise from within — they are created by someone. Someone who took care of us — or ourselves, if we began to change ourselves. This is not spontaneous generation, this is activity in relation to us.
Accordingly, we can give another, more practical criterion for distinguishing growth from development:
Accordingly, personal growth is an increase in the potential of the individual due to the internal dynamics of the personality core and its interaction with the environment. It can also be said that these are predominantly quantitative changes, understood as occurring from within. In contrast, the development of personality is produced by someone — i.e. the person himself, his relatives or society. If the influence from the outside on a person turned out to be effective, led to qualitative changes, then the development of the personality took place.
Mom fed me, and I ate and grew. I gained weight not because I made myself bigger or because my mother made me bigger, I grew up because if there is food at my age, my body grows on its own. This is growth. Or: the teacher taught me to study independently and with desire. I studied, but made me loving to study — the teacher. This is development.
From the point of view of practice, the most important difference between “personal growth” and “personal development” lies in the psychological arsenal of possible means of influencing ongoing processes. What is in our arsenal if we want to help a person’s personal growth? — Only three things: faith in a person, the creation of a free supportive environment and — psychotherapy, that is, support and treatment in case of problems. A little. What is in the arsenal of a specialist psychologist involved in the development of the personality of a student, client, participant in the training? Here the arsenal is much richer: cooperation in his self-development, study, training, transfer of knowledge, presentation of samples, development of skills and abilities. And also — rewards and punishments, suggestion and infection, involvement and other positive manipulations, all varieties of positive and other reinforcement, in general, all varieties of classical and operant conditioning.
In the table, the differences between «personal growth» and «personal development» can be seen more clearly.
It is clear that growth and development are interrelated and complement each other. Growth is the natural basis for development. You can develop only that for which there is already a natural base. If a young person is still only an Executor in terms of business responsibility, has not even grown to the level of a Specialist, then it is useless to develop a Manager in him. He is still small. The speed of development is always limited by the need for a person to grow up to what he acquired in the process of studying at the training. New personal roles must germinate in the soul, grow into the soul, only then they become not external masks, but a new facet of the personality. Only “development” without looking at growth is impossible all the time: development must be supported by natural growth. Studying should alternate with life so that new knowledge is enriched with real experience and practice.