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| Erik Erikson |
Developmental Stages:
Gender is one very important aspect of our personality. But personality is much more than our notions of being male or female together with related attitudes and interests. It includes all of the abilities, predispositions, habits, and other qualities that make each of us different from every other person.
Much of
Erik Erikson’s theory of personality development was inspired by Sigmund Freud.
Unlike Freud, however, Erikson downplays the importance of sexuality and sexual
conflicts in human development. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of the
child’s social environment. The result is a theory of psycho-social rather than
psycho-sexual development.
The major
emphasis in Erikson’s theory is on the development of a healthy self-concept,
or identity, to use his term.
One of Erikson’s most important contributions to the study of
human development is that he extended development beyond childhood.
According
to Erikson, development does not end with childhood but spans the entire course
of life. It can be described in terms of eight stages.
The first
five stages span infancy, childhood, and
adolescence; the last three describe adulthood.
Each stage involves a conflict, brought about
mainly by a person’s need to adapt to the social environment. And because the
demands of a given environment tend to be much the same for all individuals
within that culture, we tend to go through the same stages at about the same
ages—hence the notion of stages.
Trust versus Mistrust:
For
infants to adapt to an initially complex and largely bewildering world, they
have to develop a sense of trust in this world; although they are initially
mistrustful because the world is strange and unfamiliar. Hence, the basic
psycho-social conflict is trust versus
mistrust.
Resolving
the conflict results in a sense of competence and enables infants to continue
to develop and grow.
According
to Erikson, the most important person in a child’s life during this first stage
is the mother or another primary caregiver. That is because successful
resolution of the conflict between trust and mistrust depends largely on the
infant’s relationship with this caregiver and on the gradual realization that
the world is predictable, safe, and loving. According to Erikson, if the world
is unpredictable and the caregiver is rejecting, the infant may grow up to be
mistrustful and anxious.
Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt:
Initially,
infants don’t deliberately act upon the world; instead, they react to it. For
example, sucking is something that happens when stimulation is appropriate; it
is not something that the infant deliberately decides to do.
But during
the second year of life, children gradually begin to realize that they are the
authors of their own actions. As a result, they begin to develop a sense of
autonomy.
Now, it’s
important for parents to encourage their attempts to explore and to provide
opportunities for independence. Over-protectiveness can lead to doubt and
uncertainty in dealing with the world.
Initiative versus Guilt:
By the
age of 4 or 5, children have begun to develop a sense of autonomy, a sense that
they are separate individuals. Now they must discover who they are. This discovery
comes about largely as a result of children identifying with their parents.
Erikson
assumed that children seek to discover who they are—and, in fact, become what
they will be—largely by trying to be like their parents.
During this
stage of development, children’s worlds expand dramatically, not only in a
physical sense, but also through their use of language.
With their
increasing ability to explore and know the world, children need to develop a
sense of initiative with respect to their own behaviors. They are autonomous as
well as responsible for initiating behavior.
The central
process involved in resolving the initiative
versus guilt conflict is one of the identification, so the parents and the
family continue to be the most important influences in children’s development—although
preschool teachers may now begin to assume an increasingly important role. Parents
and teachers should encourage the young child’s sense of initiative and nurture
a sense of responsibility.
Industry versus Inferiority:
The fourth
developmental phase spans the elementary school years. Keeping in mind that
each of Erikson’s stages reflects the principal social/cultural demands in the
child’s life, this stage is naturally marked by children’s increasing need to
interact with and be accepted by peers.
It now
becomes vital that children receive assurance that their selves, their
identities, are significant, worthwhile. During this stage, children often take
advantage of opportunities to learn things that they think are important in
their culture. It is as though, by so doing, they hope that they will become
someone important. And successful resolution of this stage’s conflict depends
largely on how significant agencies—especially schools and teachers—respond to
children’s efforts.
Recognition
and praise are crucial for developing a positive self-concept. If children’s work is continually demeaned, seldom
praised, and rarely rewarded, the outcome may well be a lasting sense of
inferiority.
Identity versus Identity Diffusion:
Adolescence
brings with it an extremely critical, and sometimes very difficult, task: that
of developing a strong sense of identity. The crisis implicit in this stage
concerns a conflict between a strong sense of self and a vague uncertain self-concept.
The source
of conflict is the almost overwhelming number of possibilities open to
children. The conflict is made worse by the variety of models and the opposing
values evident in society. In the absence of clear commitment to values, and
perhaps to vocational goals as well, adolescents are in a state of identity diffusion.
Later
in adolescence, children may experiment with a variety of identities. In this
sense, Erikson explains, adolescence serves as a sort of “moratorium”—a period during which adolescents can try out different
roles without a final commitment.
The crisis
of adolescence is simply the conflict between the need to find an identity and
the difficulties involved in doing so. And resolution of the crisis is implicit
in the achievement of a relatively mature identity—which is not something that
all adolescents manage to achieve by the time they are out of their teens.
Stages of Adulthood:
Erikson
describes three additional psycho-social conflicts that occur during adulthood
and old age; each requires new competencies and adjustments.
Intimacy and solidarity versus isolation:
The first of the adult stages, intimacy and solidarity versus isolation, reflects most adults’ need for intimate relationships with others (as opposed to being isolated). Such relationships are especially important for those who seek marital and parental roles. For others, developmental tasks might be quite different.Generativity versus self-absorption:
The second
adult stage, generativity versus
self-absorption, describes individuals’ need to take on social, work
related, and community responsibilities that will be beneficial to others
(generative). The basic conflict here is between a tendency to remain
pre-occupied with the self (as are adolescents, for example) and cultural
demands that individuals contribute to society in various ways.
