Erik Erikson 's Theory Of Life Span Development

Erikson believed that people develop in psychosocial stages. He emphasized developmental change throughout the human life span. In Erikson's theory, eight stages of development result as we go through the life span. Each stage consists of a crisis that must be faced. According to Erikson, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point. The more an individual resolves the crises successfully, the healthier development will be.

Erikson’s (1968, 1980, 1982) psychosocial stages of development provide a framework for the different stages of development throughout the human lifespan. These stages of development begin at birth and continue until death, and separate the lifespan into eight stages based on chronological age. Within these eight different aging stages are corresponding psychosocial stages. Each of these psychosocial stages represent a conflict between two characteristics of development for that particular time period in a person’s life.

Erikson’s theory of personality is based on his eight stages of development. In each of these eight stages of

Erikson's description of the eight stages of life has a lot of appeal, and Erikson himself was described in the early 1980s as the fifth most influential psychologist of the century (Gilgen, 1982). Much research has been done on predictions made by Erikson's theory, especially the adolescent crisis of identify vs. role confusion. Erikson is one of the few famous personality theorists who said anything interesting about adolescence.")

Human development is comprised of the changes that occur in a physical, cognitive, social and emotional sense that lasts throughout a person’s life (Editorial Board, 2014). Human emotional and social development was especially important to Erik Erikson, a world renowned theorist, who developed the Psychosocial Stages of Development. Although Erikson was immensely influenced by Freud, due to his training in psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna, Erikson did not share the same psychosexual beliefs as Freudians do (McLeod, 2013). Erikson’s stages were psychosocial based off of his belief that a person’s development is effected by their environment

Robins, Chatterjee, and Canda described Erik Erikson was a forward-thinking psychologist who proposed one of the first stage theories of development that spanned birth to death. They shared that Erikson used Freud’s stages of psychosexual development as a starting point for his theory then expanded the stages to include development past the age of childhood. His theoretical model hinges on the resolution of tasks during each of his eight stages of development and rests on the assumption that a successful resolution results in a healthy ego development. Erikson basically felt that a person developed one stage successfully, or unsuccessfully, before delving into the next stage. A successful resolution of each stage was needed for the next

Erik Erikson refined eight physcosocial stages that he believed humans confront throughout their life The stages are Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Integrity vs. Despair Erikson was said to be influenced by Freud but rather than speaking on psychosexual Stages, he explains the psychosocial stages throughout a human life which made it completely different. His theories were influenced by Freud, going along with Freud’s (1923) theory regarding the structure and topography of personality.

Erik Erikson was a psychoanalyst who accepted many of Freud’s ideas while placing more importance on the social and cultural features of human development across the lifespan (Upton, 2011).

There are many methods for studying human social development. In Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory, social interactions are an important and determining factor of lifespan development. Although Erikson was influenced by many of Sigmund Freud’s studies, his studies were based upon psychosocial development versus psychosexual development. Erikson, like Freud, emphasized the importance of childhood on personality development, but unlike Freud, he believed that development occurred across the entire lifespan. Erikson thought personality developed through a series of eight stages each signified by a “crisis”. According to Erikson, if the individual successfully overcomes the situation it helps to develop a lifelong skillset, but if the crisis is not successfully resolved it may hinder development. The sense of competence or the sense of inadequacy at each stage ultimately develops an individual’s identity or “all of the beliefs, ideals, and values that shape and guide a person’s behavior (Cherry).” By examining my own social development through life and gathering information from my parents, specifically about my childhood, I made many comparisons to and connections to my own identity. As Erikson’s stages are confined by age, I considered the first five stages of the psychosocial theory of development and related them to my life.

In this Individual Theory Paper, I decided to write about Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Development. Erik Erikson is greatly influenced by Freud but instead of concentrating on psychosexual stages, Erikson choose to focus more on the individual’s psychosocial stages as well as their personality development. Psychosocial theory can be defined as a study about human development as an outcome of the interaction in which involves the psychological or the needs of an individual, and the expectations from their society (Merriam-Webster, 2016). Freud’s stage theory was too specifically focused on an individual’s body zones, and he also vaguely discussed about the interaction between children and their significant others wherein Erikson was trying to elaborate by introducing some comprehensible concepts stage by stage in his theory (Crain, 2011). In Erikson’s theory, he tend to highlight the role of society as well as the conflict that can occur, and this made Erikson an ‘ego’ psychologist. An assumption was made that every stage is faced with different conflicts and if the individual fail to resolve it at that time, it will be dragged into their next stages of life. Thus, Erikson suggested a lifespan model of development for his theory that is set well in eight stages.

Erik Erikson expanded Freud’s theory with a psychosocial perspective on development and considered the lifespan to consist of eight stages. He viewed and labeled these stages in terms of crises that individuals are faced with at each stage in their life. This is an important perspective because it indicates that all aspects of our lives are related and that the person we are today is a direct result of what we experienced earlier in our lives.

Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory states that we go through 8 developmental stages in life. Erikson states that these stages are necessary in the progression and development of human growth from infancy into adulthood. Each developmental stage presents a crisis that must be resolved during that stage for a healthy development. Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory outlines that we develop in psychosocial stages instead of psychosexual ones. I agree with Erikson because one might not get through the entire crisis within the stages which causes one not understanding themselves and their identity , the eight stages are a great way to explain the developmental stages that occurs throughout our life span.

“Erik Erickson (1902-1994) was best known for his work on stages of psychosocial development and identity crisis” (Cherry, A Brief Biography of His Remarkable Life, 2016). Erickson was able to gain a clear focus on children and was able to interpret what he was seeing by observing children throughout the life, including events of childhood, adulthood, and old age. "Erikson 's theory posits that every human being passes through several distinct and qualitatively different stages in life, from birth to death." According to him, the stages are universal, and the ages which one is said to have passed from one to another stage are also fairly universal" (Ramkumar, 2002).

Erikson, thought that the personality development happened over the course of a person’s entire life. There are 8 distinct stages of development. People will face new challenges in each stage, and the outcomes depend on how people handle the challenges. Possible outcomes according to these stages are:

Erikson’s ideas were greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud in regards to the structure of personality. (Freud’s ID, EGO and SUPEREGO) Erikson has since expanded on Freud’s theory by focusing on characteristic of the ego, and expanding the stages of personality development to include the entire lifespan. Erikson emphasized on the role that culture and society play in the development of humans and the effects that they have. According to Erikson “the ego develops as it successfully resolves crises that are distinctly social in nature. These involve establishing a sense of trust in others, developing a sense of identity in society” Unlike Freud focusing on the psychosexual ideas, Erikson focused on how children socialized and how this affected their own sense of one’s self.