Information about Psychosocial Development

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Part of a of articles on Psychoanalysis

Constructs Psychosexual development Psychosocial development Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious Id, ego, and super-ego Libido • Drive Transference • Sublimation • Resistance Important Figures Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung Alfred Adler • Otto Rank Anna Freud Karen Horney • Jacques Lacan Ronald Fairbairn • Melanie Klein Harry Stack Sullivan Erik Erikson • Nancy Chodorow Susan Sutherland Isaacs Ernest Jones Important works The Interpretation of Dreams Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Schools of Thought Self psychology • Lacanian Analytical psychology • Object relations Interpersonal • Relational Attachment • Ego psychology

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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^[1]. 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.^[2] 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.
—Erik Erikson

Note:Erikson first identified seven stages of development during his lifetime. His wife, Joan, later added the last stage after his death.

The Stages

Infancy (Birth -18 months)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust

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.

• 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 1/2 - 3 Years)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy vs. Shame & doubt

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.

• Main question asked: Do I need help from others or not?

Early Childhood (3-6 Years)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative vs. Guilt

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 is learning to master the world around them, learning basic skills and principles of physics; things fall to the ground, not up; round things roll, how to zip and tie, count and speak with ease. At this stage the child wants to begin and complete their own actions for a purpose. Guilt is a new emotion and is confusing to the child; she may feel guilty over things which are not logically guilt producing, and she will feel guilt when her initiative does not produce the desired results.

• Main question asked: How moral am I?

Middle Childhood (7-12 Years)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Industry vs. Inferiority

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.

• Main question asked: Am I good at what I do?

Adolescence (12-18 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.

• Main question asked: "Who am I, and what is my goal in life?"

Early Adulthood (19-34 years)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation

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 openness and self-absorption.

Middle Adulthood (35-60 Years)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Generativity vs. Stagnation

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.

• Main question asked: Will I ever accomplish anything useful?...

Later Adulthood (60 years-Death)

• Psychosocial Crisis: Ego integrity vs. despair

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.

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.

"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.^[3] 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?

Notes

References

• Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1950.
• Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press, 1959.
• Sheehy, Gail. Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.
• Stevens, Richard. Erik Erikson: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin's, 1983.

External links

• 'Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development', article on about.com

•  • [ e] Human development: biological - psychological
Stages	Infancy • Childhood • Adolescence • Adulthood - Early adulthood • Middle adulthood • Late adulthood
Development	Child development • Youth development • Ageing & Senescence
Theorists-theories	John Bowlby-attachment • Jean Piaget-cognitive • Lawrence Kohlberg-moral • Sigmund Freud-psychosexual • Erik Erikson-psychosocial