ERIK H. ERIKSON

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ERIK H. ERIKSON
PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Objectives
1. To study the key ingredients of Erik Eriksons
Stages of development
2. To understand further the meaning of ego,
identity crises, and the role of the environment
on the individual and
3. To be aware of the roots of Eriksons ideas on
psychosocial stages.
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Erikson was of mixed Danish and Jewish parentage.
After his parents' divorce, he had no contact
with his father. After completing his education,
he wandered around Europe, unsure of what career
to follow.
Known as the Father of Psychosocial Development
He tried painting and wood carving and accepted
an offer to teach art at a private school in
Vienna for children whose parents were undergoing
analysis at Freud's Psychoanalitic Insititute.
When he came to America, he needed to redefine
his identity as an immigrant.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany in June 15, 1902
He concluded that the quest for identity is the
major theme in life.
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Essential to Erikson's theory is the development
of the ego and the ego's ability to deal with a
series of crises or potential crises throughout
the individual's lifespan.
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ERIKSONS 8 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
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INTRODUCTION TO ERIKSONS 8 STAGES
Each stage is characterized by a different
conflict that must be resolved by the individual.
When the environment makes new demands on
people, the conflicts arise.
There are 2 ways in coping w/ each crisis, an
adaptive or maladaptive way
When each crisis is resolved, a person will have
sufficient strength to deal w/ the next stages of
development.
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STAGE 1 ORAL-SENSORY
Age Infancy to 12-18 mos.
Conflict Trust vs Mistrust
Important Event Feeding
Description
Trust and mistrust is established in the
feeding situation. Trust allows an infant to let
the mother out of sight. The mother's sensitive
care to the baby's needs lays the groundwork for
the child's sense of self.
Positive Outcome Familiarity, comfort, and
nourishment are met.
Negative Outcome Children will see the world as
unfriendly and unpredictable, they will have
trouble developing close relationships. They
become suspicious, fearful, and mistrusting of
their surroundings.
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Virtue of Hope - the belief that their needs will
be met and their wishes can be attained
Example Babies will begin to understand that
objects and people exist even when they cannot
see them.
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STAGE 2 MUSCULAR-ANAL
Age Toddler period 1 to 2 years
Conflict Autonomy vs Doubt
Important Event Toilet Training
Description
Toddlers try to use their developing
muscles to do everything themselves - to walk, to
feed, and dress.
Positive Outcome Children must take more
responsibility for their own feeding, toileting,
dressing. Parents must avoid overprotection.
Negative Outcome If parents set too many limits
or too few, children become compulsive about
controlling themselves. Fear of losing
self-control may fill them with inhibitions,
doubt, shame and loss of self-esteem.
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Virtue of Will - children learn to make their own
decisions and to use self-restraint
Example In this stage, children begin to assume
important responsibilities for self-care like
feeding, toileting dressing.
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STAGE 3 LOCOMOTOR
Age Early Childhood 2 to 6 years
Conflict Initiative vs Guilt
Important Event Independence
Description
Children in this stage are eager for
responsibility. They continue to be assertive and
like to take initiative.
Positive Outcome Children must learn to accept
w/o guilt. They must be guilt free when using
their imagination.
Negative Outcome When unresolved they become
guilt-ridden and repressed. They may become
adults who inhibit their impulses and are
self-righteously intolerant of others.
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ExampleA 4 yr-old passing tools to a parent
who is fixing a bicycle.
Virtue of Purpose - the courage to envision and
pursue valued goals, uninhibited by the defeat of
guilt and fear of punishment.
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STAGE 4 LATENCY
Age Elementary Middle School yrs. 6 to 12 years
Conflict Industry vs Inferiority
Important Event School
Description
The issue to be resolved has to do with a
child's capacity for productive work - a child
learns to count, read, and use computers.
Positive Outcome It is essential for children to
discover pleasure in being productive.
Negative Outcome If they feel inadequate, they
may regress to an earlier level of development -
lack of self-initiative if they become too
industrious, they may neglect relationships with
other people and become workaholics.
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Virtue of Competence - a view of the self as able
to master and complete tasks
Example Children want to do productive work on
their own.
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STAGE 5 ADOLESCENCE
Age Adolescence 12 to 18 yrs
Conflict Identity vs Role Confusion
Important Event Peer Relationships
Description
Adolescents are in search of an identity
that will lead them to adulthood. They make a
strong effort to answer Who am I?
Adolescents searching for identity make them
susceptibility to fads, cults, and gang loyalties
to resolve their crisis of identify vs confusion.
Love is another avenue toward identity.
Erikson believed that males cannot achieve true
intimacy until they have achieved a stable
identity. Females, he thought, achieve intimacy
before identity because girls put their identity
aside as they define themselves by the man they
will marry.
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Positive Outcome Adolescents must make a
conscious search for identity.
Negative Outcome role confusion, feelings of
inadequacy, isolation and indecisiveness
Virtue of Fidelity sustained loyalty, faith, or
a sense of belongingness to friends and
companions. Fidelity is not only the capacity to
trust others and oneself but also the capacity to
be trustworthy.
Example Adolescents attempt to establish their
own identities see themselves as separate from
their parents.
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STAGE 6 YOUNG ADULTHOOD
Age Young Adulthood 19 to 40 yrs
Conflict Intimacy vs Isolation
Important Event Love Relationships
Description
The most important events are love
relationships. Intimacy refers to ones ability
to relate to another human being on a deep,
personal level.
Positive Outcome The young adult must be willing
to be open and committed to another individual.
Negative Outcome Those unable or unwilling to
share themselves with others suffer a sense of
loneliness or isolation.
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Virtue of Love - a young adult with a strong
identity is ready to fuse it with that of another
person - mutuality of devotion, involves
commitment, sacrifice, and compromise
Example Sharing oneself with others on a moral,
emotional, and sexual level marriage
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STAGE 7 MIDDLE ADULTHOOD
Age Middle adulthood 40 to 65 years
Conflict Generativity vs Stagnation
Important Event Parenting
Description
Generativity refers to the adults ability to
care for another person.
Positive Outcome To have nurture children and
or become involved with future generations.
Negative Outcome Too much stagnation can result
in self-indulgence or even in physical or
psychological sickness.  
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Virtue of Care - a commitment to take care of the
persons, the products, and the ideas one has
learned to care for.
Example Generativity is expressed through
activities like teaching and mentorship it also
takes the form of productivity or creativity to
further develop personal identity.
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STAGE 8 MATURITY
Age 65 years to death
Conflict Integrity vs Despair
Important Event Reflection on and acceptance of
ones life
Description
Seeing order and meaning in their lives
Positive Outcome The adult feels a sense of
fulfillment about life and accepts death as an
unavoidable reality.
Negative Outcome People who do not achieve
acceptance are overwhelmed by despair, realizing
that time is too short to seek other roads to
integrity past lives are viewed as a series of
disappointments, failures and misfortunes.
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Virtue of Wisdom - accepting the life one has
lived without major regrets over what could have
been or what one should have done differently. It
implies accepting one's death as the inevitable
end of a life lived well as one knew how to live
it.
Example A aged person may find it necessary to
reflect what they had accumulated throughout life.
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Critique on Eriksons Psychosocial Theory
- Erikson has been criticized for his loose
connections of case studies and conclusions. His
theory, like Freud's, is difficult to support
with empirical evidence.
- Some of his concepts are also hard to assess
objectively or to use as a basis for research
and there is no real evidence that his stages
unfold in the sequence he proposes.
- Like Freud, Erikson too has been criticized for
an antifemale bias, since he uses the male as the
norm for healthy development.
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- For Erikson, a decision not to fulfill the
natural procreative urge has serious consequences
for development. Thus he limits "healthy"
development to loving heterosexual relationships
that produce children. His exclusion of single,
celibate, homosexual, an other childless
lifestyles has been criticized.
- His assertion that people establish their
identity in adolescence is too narrow. Other
research shows that the search for identity
continues during adulthood.
- Furthermore, Erikson's view that childless
people have trouble achieving generativity is
considered narrow by many psychologists.
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COMPARED WITH FREUD, ERIKSON'S GOOD POINTS
1. Freud concentrated on the individual's
instinctual drives and interest in different
parts of the body while Erikson emphasizes the
child's interactions with the environment.
2. Erikson felt that Freud's view of society was
too negative because Freud saw civilization as a
source of discontent, an impediment to biological
drives.
3. Unlike Freud, Erikson's theory is more
comprehensive and encompasses the years from
infancy to old age.
4. For Erikson, the course of development is
reversible, meaning personality structures built
earlier in life can undo for better or worse. For
Freud, personality structures are fixed by the
age of 5