preview

Conceptual Critique Of Erikson's Do Adolescents Have Identity?

Decent Essays

As the social worker was going through the lifespan of her client, she noticed that there were some critiques on Erik Erikson’s eight stages on how the theory connected with her client. As it was seen Genesis did not go through all first six stages an achieve or overcome the crisis. Author, Majid Amini commented in her article “Do Adolescents have Identity? A Conceptual Critique,” that the eight stages can make an outline towards a person’s life but it can not clearly show the identity or personality of a person (Amini, Jafari, 2012). The social worker also agrees with this, Genesis is a good example of this idea. She completed the first two stages without any issues, therefore according to the stages, she should also be able to achieve the following stages. In other words, the world is unpredictable, therefore a theory can not explain the outcome of a person. An issue that comes up with many developmental theories, is that it tries to explain the behavior of a person. The textbook gives an …show more content…

According to “Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development and Vocational Behavior,” written by Patrick Munley, the eight stages succeed in describing the decision of vocation. Throughout the author’s research he noticed that there was correlation with people who were part of the adjusted group in Erikson’s model and with people who had stable careers (Munley, 1975). These finding represent a situation where the achieving the stage leads to a positive outcome. The social workers patient Genesis is an example of someone who did not overcome every crisis at the right time, but still found her future vocation. Overall, Erik Erikson’s eight stages of Development are very useful in the social work field. They were useful to the social worker who was working with Genesis. It allowed for a better background and understanding of her

Get Access