A Comparison Between Freud and Erikson Essay

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

The psychodynamic approach views behaviour in terms of past childhood experiences, and the influence of unconscious processes. There are five psychosexual stages in Freud’s theory, the first being the oral stage during which the infant focuses on satisfying hunger orally. Sigmund Freud believed that during this stage of development the person can become fixated in the oral stage of development. An infant's pleasure and comfort centres on having things in the mouth during this

Erikson was a psychologist who was greatly influenced by Freud. Although influenced by Freud there are some differences in there developmental stages. Erikson believed that development in an individual was molded by society, culture, and environment. While Freud’s belief was that development is in some way is influenced by the fixation of sexual interest of different areas of the body. The stages in Erikson’s development theory outline how important social experiences can shape us. While Freud’s theory is mainly based on ones sexuality. Additionally the other significant difference between Erikson’s and Freud’s theories is the outcome of a particular stage. Erikson believed that the outcome of a certain stage was not permanent and that it could be changed later on in life. While Freud presumed that if an individual became fixated on a stage problems associated with that stage would be carried on through life.

Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory and Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory are two important and well-known psychoanalytic theories on human development. Both theories are often compared and contrasted in developmental studies. Like Freud, Erikson also believed that human development occurs in a series of stages of a person’s life. However, Freud’s theory focuses on basic needs and biological impulses like the need for food and sexual behaviors in the early stages of life. While Erikson’s theory emphasized on environment experiences and social interactions throughout the early and later stages of life.

In this assignment I will try to compare and contrast Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory of development and Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory of development.

One of Freud’s most relevant theories is his Theory of Psychosexual Development which seeks to explain sexual development from infancy to adulthood. This theory describes sexual development via five main phases. In the

He said child development is described as a series of 'psychosexual stages. Freud outlined these stages as oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Each stage involves the satisfaction of a libidinal desire and can later play a role in adult personality. If a child does not successfully complete a stage, Freud suggested that he or she would develop a fixation that would later influence adult personality and behavior.

One concept that Freud is famous for is psychosexual stages. Within this concept there are a total of five different stages that he believed individuals go through in their lifetime; oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. The oral stage starts at birth, this stage directs the baby towards sucking activities. Second, the anal stage that occurs around age three, when toddlers learn to hold and release urine and feces,

Erikson, however, claimed that behavior is motivated by desire for social interactions and that human development continues through the entire lifespan (Santrock, 2012, p.22). Erikson’s ideas take on a lighter, more positive tone because people do far more despicable things to fulfill their sexual desires than they do to fulfill their social ones; also, according to Erikson, people always have room to develop and improve themselves whereas Freud seems to think that people are stuck being the way they are once they hit adulthood. Freud split his stages of development into psychosexual focuses, oral, anal, phallic, et cetera, to represent the changes in sexual fixations that supposedly occur during development. Erikson had similarly split stages as far as (early) age ranges are concerned, but his stages focused more on turning points and forks in the road of life that people face as they go through life. Hoare (2005) adds, “For each stage of life, Erikson thus posed strengths that hold

Freud, the objective theorist, believed that the focus should be on the individual in compartments: defense mechanism, personality structures and levels of consciousness. Freud, Psychosexual stages of Child Development, widely dismissed because of the sexual perspectives. Nonetheless, we can see these concepts being present in the stages of development, such as the oral: the infant finds pleasure in chewing, biting, and sucking objects. The other concepts such as id, ego, and superego focuses on the personality and the balance needed in order to provide and shape individuality and social

Sigmund Freud argued that development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages called, psychosexual stages, or sexual drives. He states that as a person grows physically, certain areas of their body become a source of frustration, pleasure, or both. Freud suggests there are 5 stages of development, Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent, and Genital. The first stage is from birth to year one and this is when the

Erik Erikson 's psychosocial theory and Sigmund Freud 's psychosexual theory are two well-known theories of personality development with various similarities and differences. While Erikson was influenced by Freud 's ideas, his theory differed in a number of important ways and was ultimately created to be an improvement to Freud’s personality development theory (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Like Freud’s psychosexual theory, Erikson agreed that personality progresses in a sequence of predetermined phases. However, unlike Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages, Erikson’s theory describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan (Hoare, 2005).

Psychoanalytic theories explain development as unconscious processes that are heavily colored by emotion (Santrock 2014). Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalytic theorist who established a psychosexual theory believing that development occurred during life stage conflicts between a source of pleasure and the demands of reality. Many theorists after Freud believed that there was a good basis in Freud’s theory but it relied too much on the idea of sexual instincts. One such theorist was Erik Erikson, who developed a psychosocial theory about development. Erikson believed that human’s motivation lied in a desire to connect with other people. He believed the ability to handle each stage’s social crisis changed a person’s development. Freud and Erikson’s theories are extremely similar in many ways; however Erikson changed the psychoanalytic theory by taking the next step in recognizing the ability of humans to continue to develop throughout their lifespan.

Freud’s psychosexual theory and Erikson’s psychosocial theory are two important psychoanalytic theories on human development. Erikson’s theory was followed on Freud’s theory and it was based on many of Freud’s ideas. As a result of this the two theories have similarities. Both the theories recognize the importance of development. They also separates development into stages and contain similar age division for their developmental stages.

Psychosexual development is one of the key concepts of Freud’s psychodynamic theory, it implied that children began to develop their sexual maturity as soon as they were born (Hough, 2006). The theory contained five main stages (Kahn, 2002).