Erickson's theory of psychosocial development

Psychosocial development as articulated by Erik Erikson describes eight developmental stages through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage the person confronts, and hopefully masters, new challenges. Each stage builds on the successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future.

Description
Erik Erikson developed the theory in the 1950s as an improvement on Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages. Erikson accepted many of Freud's theories (including the id, ego, and superego, and Freud's infantile sexuality represented in psychosexual development), but rejected Freud's attempt to describe personality solely on the basis of sexuality. Also, Erikson criticized Freud for his concept of originology. This states that all mental illness can be traced to early experiences in childhood. According to Erikson, experience in early childhood is important, but the individual also develops within a social context. Erikson believed that childhood is very important in personality development and, unlike Freud, felt that personality continued to develop beyond five years of age. In his most influential work, Childhood and Society (1950), he divided the human life cycle into eight psychosocial stages of development.

Human personality, in principle, develops according to steps predetermined in the growing person's readiness to be driven toward, to be aware of, and to interact with a widening social radius.


 * Note:Erikson first identified eight stages of development, his wife, Joan, then added the last stage after his death.

Infancy (Birth-12 Months)
Developing trust is the first task of the ego, and it is never complete. The child will let its mother out of sight without anxiety and rage because she has become an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability. The balance of trust with mistrust depends largely on the quality of the maternal relationship.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust
 * Main question asked: Is my environment trustworthy or not?
 * Central Task: Receiving care
 * Positive Outcome: Trust in people and the environment
 * Ego Quality: Hope
 * Definition: Enduring belief that one can attain one’s deep and essential wishes
 * Developmental Task: Social attachment; Maturation of sensory, perceptual, and motor functions; Primitive causality.
 * Significant Relations: Maternal parent

Erikson proposed that the concept of trust versus mistrust is present throughout an individual’s entire life. Therefore if the concept is not addressed, taught and handled properly during infancy (when it is first introduced), an individual may be negatively affected and never fully immerse themselves in the world. For example, a person may hide themselves from the outside world and be unable to form healthy and long-lasting relationships with others, or even themselves. If an individual does not learn to trust themselves, others and the world they may lose the virtue of hope, which is directly linked to this concept. If a person loses their belief in hope they will struggle with overcoming hard times and failures in their lives, and may never fully recover from them. This would prevent them from learning and maturing into a fully-developed person if the concept of trust versus mistrust was improperly learned, understood and used in all aspects of their lives.

Younger Years (1-3 Years)
If denied independence, the child will turn against his/her urges to manipulate and discriminate. Shame develops with the child's self-consciousness. Doubt has to do with having a front and back -- a "behind" subject to its own rules. Left over doubt may become paranoia. The sense of autonomy fostered in the child and modified as life progresses serves the preservation in economic and political life of a sense of justice. This question becomes important with the child and toilet training and how the parents react to the child's newfound independence.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy vs. Shame & doubt
 * Main question asked: Do I need help from others or not?
 * Central Task: Imitation
 * Positive Outcome: Pride in self; Assertion of will in the face of danger
 * Ego Quality: Will
 * Definition: Determination to exercise free choice and self-control
 * Developmental Task: Locomotion; Fantasy play; Parallel Play; Language development; Self-control
 * Significant Relations: Parents

Early Childhood (3-5 Years)
Initiative adds to autonomy the quality of undertaking, planning, and attacking a task for the sake of being active and on the move. The child feels guilt over the goals contemplated and the acts initiated in exuberant enjoyment of new locomotive and mental powers. The castration complex occurring in this stage is due to the child's erotic fantasies. A residual conflict over initiative may be expressed as hysterical denial, which may cause the repression of the wish or the abrogation of the child's ego: paralysis and inhibition, or overcompensation and showing off. The Oedipal stage results not only in oppressive establishment of a moral sense restricting the horizon of the permissible, but also sets the direction towards the possible and the tangible which permits dreams of early childhood to be attached to goals of an active adult life. At this stage the child wants to begin and complete their own actions for a purpose.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative vs. Guilt
 * Main question asked: How moral am I?
 * Central Task: Identification
 * Positive Outcome: Able to initiate activities and enjoy learning
 * Ego Quality: Purpose
 * Definition: Courage to imagine and pursue valued goals
 * Developmental Task: Sex-role identification; Early moral development; Self-esteem; Group play; Egocentrism
 * Significant Relations: Basic family

After this stage, one may use the whole repertoire of previous modalities, modes, and zones for industrious, identity-maintaining, intimate, legacy-producing, despair-countering purposes.

Middle Childhood (6-10 Years)
To bring a productive situation to completion is an aim which gradually supersedes the whims and wishes of play. The fundamentals of technology are developed. To lose the hope of such "industrious" association may pull the child back to the more isolated, less conscious familial rivalry of the oedipal time.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Industry vs. Inferiority


 * Main question asked: Am I good at what I do? How a child does at school becomes important in development
 * Central Task: Education
 * Positive Outcome: Acquire skills for and develop competence in work, enjoy achievement
 * Ego Quality: Competence
 * Definition: Free exercise of skill and intelligence in completion of tasks
 * Developmental Task: Friendship, skill learning, self-evaluation, team play things.
 * Significant Relations: School

Adolescence (11-18 Years)

 * Psychosocial Crisis: Identity vs. Role Confusion

The adolescent is newly concerned with how they appear to others. Ego identity is the accrued confidence that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the past are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others, as evidenced in the promise of a career. The inability to settle on a school or occupational identity is disturbing.

An identity crisis generally happens at this stage because of the changes in an individual. Those changes reflect both physical and cognitive maturation.
 * Main question asked: What is my goal in life?


 * Central Task: Peer group, cliques
 * Positive Outcome: A strong group identity, ready to plan for the future
 * Ego Quality: Loyalty
 * Definition: Ability to freely pledge and sustain loyalty to others
 * Developmental Task: Physical maturation, emotional development, membership in peer group, sexual relationships
 * Significant Relations: Peer groups

Early Adulthood (18-34 years)
Body and ego must be masters of organ modes and of the other nuclear conflicts in order to face the fear of ego loss in situations which call for self-abandon. The avoidance of these experiences leads to isolation and self-absorption. The counterpart of intimacy is distantiation, which is the readiness to isolate and destroy forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to one's own. Now true genitality can fully develop. The danger at this stage is isolation, which can lead to severe character problems.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
 * Central Task: Caregiving
 * Positive Outcome: Form close relationships and share with others
 * Ego Quality: Love
 * Definition: Capacity for mutuality that transcends childhood dependency
 * Developmental Task: Stable relationships; Child bearing; Work etc.
 * Significant Relations: Marital partner, friends.

Erikson's listed criteria for "genital utopia" illustrate his insistence on the role of many modes and modalities in harmony:
 * mutuality of orgasm
 * with a loved partner
 * of opposite sex
 * with whom one is willing and able to share a trust, and
 * with whom one is willing and able to regulate the cycles of work, procreation, and recreation
 * so as to secure to the offspring all the stages of satisfactory development

Middle Adulthood (35-60 Years)
Generativity is the concern of establishing and guiding the next generation. Simply having or wanting children doesn't achieve generativity. Socially-valued work and disciplines are also expressions of generativity.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Generativity vs. Stagnation
 * Main question asked: Will I ever accomplish anything useful?
 * Central Task: Creativity
 * Positive Outcome: Nurturing children or helping the next generation in other ways
 * Ego Quality: Care
 * Definition: Commitment to and concern for family and community
 * Developmental Task: Nurture close relationships; Management of career and household; Parenting
 * Significant Relations: Workplace - community & family....

Later Adulthood (60 years-Death)
Ego integrity is the ego's accumulated assurance of its capacity for order and meaning. Despair is signified by a fear of one's own death, as well as the loss of self-sufficiency, and of loved partners and friends. Healthy children, Erikson tells us, won't fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
 * Psychosocial Crisis: Ego integrity vs. despair
 * Central Task: Introspection
 * Positive Outcome: A sense of fulfillment about life; a sense of unity with self and others
 * Ego Quality: Wisdom
 * Definition: Detached yet active concern with life in the face of death
 * Developmental Task: Promote intellectual vigor; Redirect energy to new roles and activities; Develop a point of view about death
 * Significant Relations: Humankind ("My-kind').

Value of the theory
One value of this theory is that it illuminated why individuals who had been thwarted in the healthy resolution of early phases (such as in learning healthy levels of trust and autonomy in toddlerhood) had such difficulty with the crises that came in adulthood. More importantly, it did so in a way that provided answers for practical application. It raised new potential for therapists and their patients to identify key issues and skills that required addressing. But at the same time, it yielded a guide or yardstick that could be used to assess teaching and child rearing practices in terms of their ability to nurture and facilitate healthy emotional and cognitive development.

In fact, Erikson’s contributions to the field of child development are only matched in impact and significance by the work of Jean Piaget. Like Piaget, Erikson came to the conclusion that children should not be rushed in their development; that each developmental phase was vastly important and should be allowed time to fully unfold. While Piaget emphasized that cognitive development could not be rushed (without sacrificing full intellectual potential), Erikson emphasized that a child's development must not be rushed, or dire emotional harm would be done, harm that would seriously undermine a child’s ability to succeed in life.

When you read through the stages, it’s impossible not to identify them as you’ve experienced them or as you see your children experiencing them. However, Erikson’s theory is not without critics. Many say that it is too focused on infancy and childhood and isn’t very helpful for later in life. Others say it really applies to boys and not girls using Erikson’s belief (Freudian) that boys and girls naturally develop different personalities.

In general, Erikson’s Theory of Human Development is widely accepted and plays a major role in all human and psychological development studies and theories. The best advice is to use the theory as a framework or map for understanding and identifying what issues/conflicts unresolved lead to current behavior and preparing for the stages to come.

"Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness, his defeats will substantiate it. The questions as to who is bigger and who can do or not do this or that, and to whom—these questions fill the adult’s inner life far beyond the necessities and the desirabilities which he understands and for which he plans." - Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994), U.S. psychoanalyst. Childhood and Society, ch. 11 (1950).

Critique
Most empirical research into Erikson has stemmed around his views on adolescence and attempts to establish identity. His theoretical approach was studied and supported, particularly regarding adolescence, by James E. Marcia. Marcia's work has distinguished different forms of identity, and there is some empirical evidence that those people who form the most coherent self-concept in adolescence are those who are most able to make intimate attachments in early adulthood. This supports Eriksonian theory, in that it suggests that those best equipped to resolve the crisis of early adulthood are those who have most successfully resolved the crisis of adolescence.

On the other hand, Erikson's theory may be questioned as to whether his stages must be regarded as sequential, and only occurring within the age ranges he suggests. For example, does one only search for identity during the adolescent years, or are there times later in life (or earlier) when one is searching for identity. Moreover, does one stage really need to happen before other stages can be completed? Does one need to first achieve industry before achieving identity or intimacy?