Analyzing Erikson's Socioemotional Development

Eric Erikson was one of the most famous theorists of the twentieth century; he created many theories. One of the most talked about theories is his theory of psychosocial development. This is a theory that describes stages in which an individual should pass as they are going through life. His theory includes nine stages all together. The original theory only included eight stages but Erikson‘s wife found a ninth stage and published it after his death. The nine stages include: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. identity confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, integrity vs. despair, and hope and faith vs. despair (Crandell and Crandell,

In the early 20th-century, interest in the field of child development emerged. Researchers and theorists studied the ways in which children grew, learned, and, in some instances, were shaped by societal influences (Weiland, 1993). The study of child development enables us to appreciate and understand the social, emotional, physical, educational, and cognitive growth that children go through from birth to early adulthood. Grand theories attempt to organize and arrange concepts and aspects of development using a step approach. Such as that of Erik Erikson’s theory, the Psychosocial Identity Development theory, in which he addresses the development of personal, emotional, and social progression in an individual through stages (Pretorius et al., 2015). Erikson’s model for the approach of development involves the focus of overcoming conflicts that individuals encounter over the span of their childhood that influence their ego identity, or the conscious sense of self that develops and constantly changes due to new experiences and information that is acquired through daily interactions with others and events. In Erikson’s theory, he believed that each person experienced a conflict that served as a defining moment in their development that essentially shaped who they would become later on in life; he believed that unresolved problems of adult life echoed unresolved conflicts of one’s childhood (Berger, 2011).

However, Erikson is rather vague about the causes of development self. These stages, however, can be resolved successfully at a later time. No matter what, people form thousands of relationships to get through the ups and downs in life. To be honest, life would be pretty boring and empty without relationships. One of the most important relationships is the one that people form with their parents. Many people find that they can relate to his theories about various stages of the life cycle through their own experiences.

I am now in Erikson's fourth stage of psychosocial development and I am experiencing only industry and not inferiority. I am six years old and I am switching schools already. School is really hard for me because I am incredibly timid and I do not speak to any other classmates. My teacher also makes me cry everyday before and after school, so my parents and grandmother decided to take me out of private school in kindergarten. But I like school because it gives me a place to be productive in. I have a hard time adjusting to other classmates in my new school but I like my teacher in first grade, Mrs. Barnehart, and form a good relationship with her due to behaving well in class. She writes my mom notes and praises me for listening

The middle adulthood stage of development is from about forty years of age until about sixty five years of age. At this stage, the typical person has found their desired career path, a relationship worth settling down with, and their piece of the bigger picture. Being successful and giving back to the community is important during this time frame. According to Erikson’s psychosocial stages of human development, this is the point in life where the question is generativity or stagnation. Generativity is reached if a person feels that they are successful and doing a good service for the rest of the world, but if the feeling of failure in these areas arises stagnation, inactivity, is reached. Both generativity and stagnation are developed mainly

Erikson's Psychosocial Theory is the one that would stick with me the most. Lot of it makes sense because with the different stages he's mentioned such as trust vs mistrust, identity vs role confusion, intimacy versus isolations to integrity vs despair. The trust vs mistrust sticks because of some of the stories and clips that was in class. With trust vs mistrust the idea is if a child has bad things happen in certain situations the child will begin to mistrust. While for trust if positive reinforcement is established the child begins to develop self control and learns to redirect there feelings or emotions. In one video about an abused girl she was redirecting her anger toward her baby brother which came from the mistrust of her abuser.

Erik Erikson believed that each of his stages is dependent upon each other and we have to solve the conflict before progressing to the next stage. Despite Erikson’s beliefs, is it possible for a person to start on a different stage first? Does the adolescence only have identity cohesion or role confusion as an adaptive and maladaptive way to cope with the issues in life? Is there a possibility that the adolescence needs to find intimacy and generativity in order to discover their role in life? Another question that I thought about was how does Erikson’s stages of development affect personality? How much relation does the stages have in according to a person’s personality?

Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory places everyone into stages, from the days where they still need diapers and bottles, to the days where they can barely remember who they are. We all go through the stages in life where we learn to walk, communicate, and trust. How easy we are influenced and how we feel internally is what helps us understand how we are placed within these stages.

Shame: when parents demand their toddler to do difficult things early the child will develop insecurity, they feel that they can’t do it and feel ashamed of themselves.

In Erik Erikson’s theory he explains that in every stage, a positive or a negative attitude is developed within an individual. During our developing stages we are either successful or we fail. Each stage will come to us whether or not we’re ready for them or not. You can think of the stages as learning stages where crisis occur .Only if we have learned from the previous crisis we are successful. You cannot avoid 1 stage and move to a next stage because of the developing process. The outcome of our lives depends on the way we chose to progress throughout each stage in life. Erikson had his own way in describing each stage in life that we all must go through.

Erik Erikson was a German born, American developmental psychologist. He is known best for his theory of psychosocial development, and creating the phrase “identity crisis”. He practiced after Freud, adopting some and disagreeing with some of his theories.

Growing up experiencing his own identity crisis and misfortunes during his childhood, Erik Homberger Erikson, a well-known psychologist, used this as an inspiration to further one’s understanding of a healthy personality and sense of self. This gave rise to his successful establishment of the theory of Psychosocial Development. Although derived from Sigmund Freud’s theory of Psychosexual Development, Erickson believed that a person’s social experiences cause a great impact on their sense of identity throughout their entire lifespan in eight different stages of development, as opposed to the five stages Freud assumed ended when a person reaches early adulthood (Cherry. 2016). Erickson theorized that a person’s ability to successfully complete a stage of development, regardless of their developmental challenges, directly affected the outcome of a healthy or unhealthy personality and sense of self. In his attempt to exceed further in understanding how a person’s social environment affects their personality and identity, Erikson’s findings became great contributions to the study of psychology.

Every person is a unique individual. Each of us possesses characteristics and traits that may be influenced either by genetic, environmental factors or both. These two factors are constantly argued in the field of psychology. In my opinion as counselor, both perspectives have its respective strengths and weaknesses. It is important to a counselor like me, to have deeper knowledge about the different personality theories because it allows me to know myself more and understand the people around me especially the counselees who trust my ability.

No matter who you are I believe that everyone will go through stages in their life that will get them to where they are on today. I am a person who has a very interesting story; this is the first time it will be told in full. We were asked to use Erik Erikson’s theory of development as a guideline to telling the story of our lives. At first I was very nervous; however, I soon realized that this would be a fun task. Erik Erikson has eight stages of Development (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman). I will be walking you though my life using each one of his stages drawing out the map of my life. Within my life I have had some very interesting encounters. I have been through foster care, abuse, rape, molestation, starvation, adoption, depression, and

Erik Erikson is well renowned for his Psychosocial Developmental Stage Theory. Erikson expanded on Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory by revisiting the theory and determining that personality development is a life-long continuous process versus Freud’s assessment that personality is developed during early childhood and late adolescence and is fully developed by the time an individual reaches early adulthood. Erikson’s theory has 8 stages that have two possible outcomes in each stage which may or may not be successfully completed by the individual. In addition, Erikson notes that people may move from one stage to another even though success was not achieved in a previous stage, but the lack of success may cause problems in the individuals coping skills and development in later life.