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Freud 's Theory Of Psychosocial Development

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The lifespan perspective is crucial for understanding human development. There are many different perspectives on the lifespan and the lifespan has been broken down in many different ways. A variety of scholars and theorists have proposed unique perspectives on lifespan. Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychosocial development considered five lifespan stages; oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital (Rathus, 2014). 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. Other sources view the lifespan as having nine stages broken into numeric age categories (Annenberg Foundation, 2015). From a leisure perspective, five lifespan stages are considered (Godbey, 2008). These lifespan perspectives exclude the prenatal stage. From an overall human development viewpoint, I think it is important to include the prenatal stage and I would break the lifespan down into the same eight stages identified by Rathus (2014). In Rathus’ (2014) text, eight lifespan stages are identified; prenatal, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late

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