Our Lady
of
NCM101 –
Human Behavior
Theory
Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist. This means that he accepts
Freud's ideas as basically correct, including the more debatable ideas such as
the Oedipal complex, and accepts as well the ideas about the ego that were
added by other Freudian loyalists such as Heinz Hartmann and, of, course, Anna
Freud. However, Erikson is much more society and culture-oriented than most
Freudians, as you might expect from someone with his anthropological interests,
and he often pushes the instincts and the unconscious practically out of the
picture. Perhaps because of this, Erikson is popular among Freudians and
non-Freudians alike!
The epigenetic principle
He is most famous for his work in refining and expanding Freud's theory of
stages. Development, he says, functions by the epigenetic principle.
This principle says that we develop through a predetermined unfolding of our
personalities in eight stages. Our progress through each stage is in part
determined by our success, or lack of success, in all the previous stages. A
little like the unfolding of a rose bud, each petal opens up at a certain time,
in a certain order, which nature, through its genetics, has determined. If we
interfere in the natural order of development by pulling a petal forward
prematurely or out of order, we ruin the development of the entire flower.
Each stage involves certain developmental tasks that are psychosocial
in nature. Although he follows Freudian tradition by calling them crises,
they are more drawn out and less specific than that term implies. The child in
grammar school, for example, has to learn to be industrious during that period
of his or her life, and that industriousness is learned through the complex
social interactions of school and family.
The various tasks are referred to by two terms. The infant's task, for
example, is called "trust-mistrust." At first, it might seem obvious
that the infant must learn trust and not mistrust. But Erikson made it clear
that there it is a balance we must learn: Certainly, we need to learn mostly
trust; but we also need to learn a little mistrust, so as not to grow up to
become gullible fools!
Each stage has a certain optimal time as well. It is no use trying to
rush children into adulthood, as is so common among people who are obsessed with
success. Neither is it possible to slow the pace or to try to protect our
children from the demands of life. There is a time for each task.
If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain virtue or
psychosocial strength which will help us through the rest of the stages of our
lives. On the other hand, if we don't do so well, we may develop maladaptations
and malignancies, as well as endanger all our future development. A malignancy
is the worse of the two, and involves too little of the positive and too much
of the negative aspect of the task, such as a person who can't trust others. A
maladaptation is not quite as bad and involves too much of the positive and too
little of the negative, such as a person who trusts too much.
Children and adults
Perhaps Erikson's greatest innovation was to postulate not five stages, as
Freud had done, but eight. Erikson elaborated Freud's genital stage into
adolescence plus three stages of adulthood. We certainly don't stop developing
-- especially psychologically -- after ouur twelfth or thirteenth birthdays; It
seems only right to extend any theory of stages to cover later development!
Erikson also had some things to say about the interaction of generations,
which he called mutuality. Freud had made it abundantly clear that a
child's parents influence his or her development dramatically. Erikson pointed
out that children influence their parents' development as well. The arrival of
children, for example, into a couple's life, changes that life considerably,
and moves the new parents along their developmental paths. It is even
appropriate to add a third (and in some cases, a fourth) generation to the
picture: Many of us have been influenced by our grandparents, and they by us.
A particularly clear example of mutuality can be seen in the problems of the
teenage mother. Although the mother and her child may have a fine life
together, often the mother is still involved in the tasks of adolescence, that
is, in finding out who she is and how she fits into the larger society. The
relationship she has or had with the child's father may have been immature on
one or both sides, and if they don't marry, she will have to deal with the
problems of finding and developing a relationship as well. The infant, on the
other hand, has the simple, straight-forward needs that infants have, and the
most important of these is a mother with the mature abilities and social
support a mother should have. If the mother's parents step in to help, as one
would expect, then they, too, are thrown off of their developmental tracks,
back into a life-style they thought they had passed, and which they might find
terribly demanding. And so on....
The ways in which our lives intermesh are terribly complex
and very frustrating to the theorist. But ignoring them is to ignore something
vitally important about our development and our personalities.
The first stage
The first stage, infancy or the oral-sensory stage, is approximately
the first year or year and a half of life. The task is to develop trust
without completely eliminating the capacity for mistrust.
If mom and dad can give the newborn a degree of familiarity, consistency,
and continuity, then the child will develop the feeling that the world --
especially the social world -- is a safe place to be, that people are reliable
and loving. Through the parents' responses, the child also learns to trust his
or her own body and the biological urges that go with it.
If the parents are unreliable and inadequate, if they reject the infant or
harm it, if other interests cause both parents to turn away from the infants
needs to satisfy their own instead, then the infant will develop mistrust. He
or she will be apprehensive and suspicious around people.
Please understand that this doesn't mean that the parents have to be
perfect. In fact, parents who are overly protective of the child, are there the
minute the first cry comes out, will lead that child into the maladaptive
tendency Erikson calls sensory maladjustment: Overly trusting, even
gullible, this person cannot believe anyone would mean them harm, and will use
all the defenses at their command to retain their pollyanna perspective.
Worse, of course, is the child whose balance is tipped way over on the
mistrust side: They will develop the malignant tendency of withdrawal,
characterized by depression, paranoia, and possibly psychosis.
If the proper balance is achieved, the child will develop the virtue hope,
the strong belief that, even when things are not going well, they will work out
well in the end. One of the signs that a child is doing well in the first stage
is when the child isn't overly upset by the need to wait a moment for the
satisfaction of his or her needs: Mom or dad don't have to be perfect; I trust
them enough to believe that, if they can't be here immediately, they will be
here soon; Things may be tough now, but they will work out. This is the same
ability that, in later life, gets us through disappointments in love, our
careers, and many other domains of life.
Stage two
The second stage is the anal-muscular stage of early childhood, from
about eighteen months to three or four years old. The task is to achieve a
degree of autonomy while minimizing shame and doubt.
If mom and dad (and the other care-takers that often come into the picture
at this point) permit the child, now a toddler, to explore and manipulate his
or her environment, the child will develop a sense of autonomy or independence.
The parents should not discourage the child, but neither should they push. A
balance is required. People often advise new parents to be "firm but
tolerant" at this stage, and the advice is good. This way, the child will
develop both self-control and self-esteem.
On the other hand, it is rather easy for the child to develop instead a
sense of shame and doubt. If the parents come down hard on any attempt to
explore and be independent, the child will soon give up with the assumption
that cannot and should not act on their own. We should keep in mind that even
something as innocent as laughting at the toddler's efforts can lead the child
to feel deeply ashamed, and to doubt his or her abilities.
And there are other ways to lead children to shame and doubt: If you give
children unrestricted freedom and no sense of limits, or if you try to help children
do what they should learn to do for themselves, you will also give them the
impression that they are not good for much. If you aren't patient enough to
wait for your child to tie his or her shoe-laces, your child will never learn
to tie them, and will assume that this is too difficult to learn!
Nevertheless, a little "shame and doubt" is not only inevitable,
but beneficial. Without it, you will develop the maladaptive tendency Erikson
calls impulsiveness, a sort of shameless willfulness that leads you, in
later childhood and even adulthood, to jump into things without proper
consideration of your abilities.
Worse, of course, is too much shame and doubt, which leads to the malignancy
Erikson calls compulsiveness. The compulsive person feels as if their
entire being rides on everything they do, and so everything must be done
perfectly. Following all the rules precisely keeps you from mistakes, and
mistakes must be avoided at all costs. Many of you know how it feels to always
be ashamed and always doubt yourself. A little more patience and tolerance with
your own children may help them avoid your path. And give yourself a little
slack, too!
If you get the proper, positive balance of autonomy and shame and doubt, you
will develop the virtue of willpower or determination. One of the most
admirable -- and frustrating -- thing about two- and three-year-olds is their
determination. "Can do" is their motto. If we can preserve that
"can do" attitude (with appropriate modesty to balance it) we are
much better off as adults.
Stage three
Stage three is the genital-locomotor stage or play age. From three or
four to five or six, the task confronting every child is to learn initiative
without too much guilt.
Initiative means a positive response to the world's challenges, taking on
responsibilities, learning new skills, feeling purposeful. Parents can
encourage initiative by encouraging children to try out their ideas. We should
accept and encourage fantasy and curiosity and imagination. This is a time for
play, not for formal education. The child is now capable, as never before, of
imagining a future situation, one that isn't a reality right now. Initiative is
the attempt to make that non-reality a reality.
But if children can imagine the future, if they can plan, then they can be
responsible as well, and guilty. If my two-year-old flushes my watch down the
toilet, I can safely assume that there were no "evil intentions." It
was just a matter of a shiny object going round and round and down. What fun! But
if my five year old does the same thing... well, she should know what's going
to happen to the watch, what's going to happen to daddy's temper, and what's
going to happen to her! She can be guilty of the act, and she can begin to feel
guilty as well. The capacity for moral judgment has arrived.
Erikson is, of course, a Freudian, and as such, he includes the Oedipal
experience in this stage. From his perspective, the Oedipal crisis involves the
reluctance a child feels in relinquishing his or her closeness to the opposite
sex parent. A parent has the responsibility, socially, to encourage the child
to "grow up -- you're not a baby anymore!" But if this process is
done too harshly and too abruptly, the child learns to feel guilty about his or
her feelings.
Too much initiative and too little guilt means a maladaptive tendency
Erikson calls ruthlessness. The ruthless person takes the initiative
alright; They have their plans, whether it's a matter of school or romance or
politics or career. It's just that they don't care who they step on to achieve
their goals. The goals are everything, and guilty feelings are for the weak.
The extreme form of ruthlessness is sociopathy.
Ruthlessness is bad for others, but actually relatively easy on the ruthless
person. Harder on the person is the malignancy of too much guilt, which Erikson
calls inhibition. The inhibited person will not try things because
"nothing ventured, nothing lost" and, particularly, nothing to feel
guilty about. On the sexual, Oedipal, side, the inhibited person may be
impotent or frigid.
A good balance leads to the psychosocial strength of purpose. A sense
of purpose is something many people crave in their lives, yet many do not
realize that they themselves make their purposes, through imagination and
initiative. I think an even better word for this virtue would have been
courage, the capacity for action despite a clear understanding of your
limitations and past failings.
Stage four
Stage four is the latency stage, or the school-age child from about
six to twelve. The task is to develop a capacity for industry while
avoiding an excessive sense of inferiority. Children must "tame the
imagination" and dedicate themselves to education and to learning the social
skills their society requires of them.
There is a much broader social sphere at work now: The parents and other
family members are joined by teachers and peers and other members of he
community at large. They all contribute: Parents must encourage, teachers must
care, peers must accept. Children must learn that there is pleasure not only in
conceiving a plan, but in carrying it out. They must learn the feeling of
success, whether it is in school or on the playground, academic or social.
A good way to tell the difference between a child in the third stage and one
in the fourth stage is to look at the way they play games. Four-year-olds may
love games, but they will have only a vague understanding of the rules, may
change them several times during the course of the game, and be very unlikely
to actually finish the game, unless it is by throwing the pieces at their
opponents. A seven-year-old, on the other hand, is dedicated to the rules,
considers them pretty much sacred, and is more likely to get upset if the game
is not allowed to come to its required conclusion.
If the child is allowed too little success, because of harsh teachers or
rejecting peers, for example, then he or she will develop instead a sense of
inferiority or incompetence. An additional source of inferiority Erikson
mentions is racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination: If a child
believes that success is related to who you are rather than to how hard you
try, then why try?
Too much industry leads to the maladaptive tendency called narrow
virtuosity. We see this in children who aren't allowed to "be
children," the ones that parents or teachers push into one area of
competence, without allowing the development of broader interests. These are
the kids without a life: child actors, child athletes, child musicians, child
prodigies of all sorts. We all admire their industry, but if we look a little
closer, it's all that stands in the way of an empty life.
Much more common is the malignancy called inertia. This includes all
of us who suffer from the "inferiority complexes" Alfred Adler talked
about. If at first you don't succeed, don't ever try again! Many of us didn't
do well in mathematics, for example, so we'd die before we took another math
class. Others were humiliated instead in the gym class, so we never try out for
a sport or play a game of racquetball. Others never developed social skills --
the most important skills of all -- and so we never go out in public. We become
inert.
A happier thing is to develop the right balance of industry and inferiority
-- that is, mostly industry with just a ttouch of inferiority to keep us
sensibly humble. Then we have the virtue called competency.
Stage five
Stage five is adolescence, beginning with puberty and ending around
18 or 20 years old. The task during adolescence is to achieve ego identity
and avoid role confusion. It was adolescence that interested Erikson
first and most, and the patterns he saw here were the bases for his thinking
about all the other stages.
Ego identity means knowing who you are and how you fit in to the rest of
society. It requires that you take all you've learned about life and yourself
and mold it into a unified self-image, one that your community finds
meaningful.
There are a number of things that make things easier: First, we should have
a mainstream adult culture that is worthy of the adolescent's respect, one with
good adult role models and open lines of communication.
Further, society should provide clear rites of passage, certain
accomplishments and rituals that help to distinguish the adult from the child.
In primitive and traditional societies, an adolescent boy may be asked to leave
the village for a period of time to live on his own, hunt some symbolic animal,
or seek an inspirational vision. Boys and girls may be required to go through
certain tests of endurance, symbolic ceremonies, or educational events. In one
way or another, the distinction between the powerless, but irresponsible, time
of childhood and the powerful and responsible time of adulthood, is made clear.
Without these things, we are likely to see role confusion, meaning an
uncertainty about one's place in society and the world. When an adolescent is
confronted by role confusion, Erikson say he or she is suffering from an
identity crisis. In fact, a common question adolescents in our society ask is a
straight-forward question of identity: "Who am I?"
One of Erikson's suggestions for adolescence in our society is the psychosocial
moratorium. He suggests you take a little "time out." If you have
money, go to
There is such a thing as too much "ego identity," where a person
is so involved in a particular role in a particular society or subculture that
there is no room left for tolerance. Erikson calls this maladaptive tendency fanaticism.
A fanatic believes that his way is the only way. Adolescents are, of course,
known for their idealism, and for their tendency to see things in black-and-white.
These people will gather others around them and promote their beliefs and
life-styles without regard to others' rights to disagree.
The lack of identity is perhaps more difficult still, and Erikson refers to
the malignant tendency here as repudiation. They repudiate their
membership in the world of adults and, even more, they repudiate their need for
an identity. Some adolescents allow themselves to "fuse" with a
group, especially the kind of group that is particularly eager to provide the
details of your identity: religious cults, militaristic organizations, groups
founded on hatred, groups that have divorced themselves from the painful
demands of mainstream society. They may become involved in destructive
activities, drugs, or alcohol, or you may withdraw into their own psychotic
fantasies. After all, being "bad" or being "nobody" is
better than not knowing who you are!
If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will have the virtue Erikson
called fidelity. Fidelity means loyalty, the ability to live by
societies standards despite their imperfections and incompleteness and
inconsistencies. We are not talking about blind loyalty, and we are not talking
about accepting the imperfections. After all, if you love your community, you
will want to see it become the best it can be. But fidelity means that you have
found a place in that community, a place that will allow you to contribute.
Stage six
If you have made it this far, you are in the stage of young adulthood, which
lasts from about 18 to about 30. The ages in the adult stages are much fuzzier
than in the childhood stages, and people may differ dramatically. The task is
to achieve some degree of intimacy, as opposed to remaining in isolation.
Intimacy is the ability to be close to others, as a lover, a friend, and as
a participant in society. Because you have a clear sense of who you are, you no
longer need to fear "losing" yourself, as many adolescents do. The
"fear of commitment" some people seem to exhibit is an example of
immaturity in this stage. This fear isn't always so obvious. Many people today
are always putting off the progress of their relationships: I'll get married
(or have a family, or get involved in important social issues) as soon as I finish
school, as soon as I have a job, as soon as I have a house, as soon as.... If
you've been engaged for the last ten years, what's holding you back?
Neither should the young adult need to prove him- or herself anymore. A
teenage relationship is often a matter of trying to establish identity through
"couple-hood." Who am I? I'm her boy-friend. The young adult
relationship should be a matter of two independent egos wanting to create
something larger than themselves. We intuitively recognize this when we frown
on a relationship between a young adult and a teenager: We see the potential
for manipulation of the younger member of the party by the older.
Our society hasn't done much for young adults, either. The emphasis on
careers, the isolation of urban living, the splitting apart of relationships
because of our need for mobility, and the general impersonal nature of modern
life prevent people from naturally developing their intimate relationships. I
am typical of many people in having moved dozens of times in my life. I haven't
the faintest idea what has happened to the kids I grew up with, or even my
college buddies. My oldest friend lives a thousand miles away. I live where I
do out of career necessity and feel no real sense of community.
Before I get too depressing, let me mention that many of you may not have
had these experiences. If you grew up and stayed in your community, and
especially if your community is a rural one, you are much more likely to have
deep, long-lasting friendships, to have married your high school sweetheart,
and to feel a great love for your community. But this style of life is quickly
becoming an anachronism.
Erikson calls the maladaptive form promiscuity, referring
particularly to the tendency to become intimate too freely, too easily, and
without any depth to your intimacy. This can be true of your relationships with
friends and neighbors and your whole community as well as with lovers.
The malignancy he calls exclusion, which refers to the tendency to
isolate oneself from love, friendship, and community, and to develop a certain
hatefulness in compensation for one's loneliness.
If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will instead carry with you
for the rest of your life the virtue or psychosocial strength Erikson calls love.
Love, in the context of his theory, means being able to put aside differences
and antagonisms through "mutuality of devotion." It includes not only
the love we find in a good marriage, but the love between friends and the love
of one's neighbor, co-worker, and compatriot as well.
Stage seven
The seventh stage is that of middle adulthood. It is hard to pin a
time to it, but it would include the period during which we are actively
involved in raising children. For most people in our society, this would put it
somewhere between the middle twenties and the late fifties. The task here is to
cultivate the proper balance of generativity and stagnation.
Generativity is an extension of love into the future. It is a concern for
the next generation and all future generations. As such, it is considerably
less "selfish" than the intimacy of the previous stage: Intimacy, the
love between lovers or friends, is a love between equals, and it is necessarily
reciprocal. Oh, of course we love each other unselfishly, but the reality is
such that, if the love is not returned, we don't consider it a true love. With
generativity, that implicit expectation of reciprocity isn't there, at least
not as strongly. Few parents expect a "return on their investment"
from their children; If they do, we don't think of them as very good parents!
Although the majority of people practice generativity by having and raising
children, there are many other ways as well. Erikson considers teaching,
writing, invention, the arts and sciences, social activism, and generally
contributing to the welfare of future generations to be generativity as well --
anything, in fact, that satisfies that old "need to be needed."
Stagnation, on the other hand, is self-absorption, caring for no-one. The
stagnant person ceases to be a productive member of society. It is perhaps hard
to imagine that we should have any "stagnation" in our lives, but the
maladaptive tendency Erikson calls overextension illustrates the
problem: Some people try to be so generative that they no longer allow time for
themselves, for rest and relaxation. The person who is overextended no longer
contributes well. I'm sure we all know someone who belongs to so many clubs, or
is devoted to so many causes, or tries to take so many classes or hold so many
jobs that they no longer have time for any of them!
More obvious, of course, is the malignant tendency of rejectivity.
Too little generativity and too much stagnation and you are no longer
participating in or contributing to society. And much of what we call "the
meaning of life" is a matter of how we participate and what we contribute.
This is the stage of the "midlife crisis." Sometimes men and women
take a look at their lives and ask that big, bad question "what am I doing
for?" Notice the question carefully: Because their focus is on themselves,
they ask what, rather then whom, they are doing it for.
But if you are successful at this stage, you will have a capacity for caring
that will serve you through the rest of your life.
Stage eight
This last stage, referred to delicately as late adulthood or
maturity, or less delicately as old age, begins sometime around retirement,
after the kids have gone, say somewhere around 60. Some older folks will
protest and say it only starts when you feel old and so on, but that's an
effect of our youth-worshipping culture, which has even old people avoiding any
acknowledgement of age. In Erikson's theory, reaching this stage is a good
thing, and not reaching it suggests that earlier problems retarded your
development!
The task is to develop ego integrity with a minimal amount of despair.
This stage, especially from the perspective of youth, seems like the most
difficult of all. First comes a detachment from society, from a sense of
usefulness, for most people in our culture. Some retire from jobs they've held
for years; others find their duties as parents coming to a close; most find
that their input is no longer requested or required.
Then there is a sense of biological uselessness, as the body no longer does
everything it used to. Women go through a sometimes dramatic menopause; Men
often find they can no longer "rise to the occasion." Then there are
the illnesses of old age, such as arthritis, diabetes, heart problems, concerns
about breast and ovarian and prostrate cancers. There come fears about things
that one was never afraid of before -- the flu, for example, or just falling
down.
Along with the illnesses come concerns of death. Friends die. Relatives die.
One's spouse dies. It is, of course, certain that you, too, will have your
turn. Faced with all this, it might seem like everyone would feel despair.
In response to this despair, some older people become preoccupied with the
past. After all, that's where things were better. Some become preoccupied with
their failures, the bad decisions they made, and regret that (unlike some in
the previous stage) they really don't have the time or energy to reverse them.
We find some older people become depressed, spiteful, paranoid,
hypochondriacal, or developing the patterns of senility with or without
physical bases.
Ego integrity means coming to terms with your life, and thereby coming to
terms with the end of life. If you are able to look back and accept the course
of events, the choices made, your life as you lived it, as being necessary,
then you needn't fear death. Although most of you are not at this point in
life, perhaps you can still sympathize by considering your life up to now.
We've all made mistakes, some of them pretty nasty ones; Yet, if you hadn't
made these mistakes, you wouldn't be who you are. If you had been very fortunate,
or if you had played it safe and made very few mistakes, your life would not
have been as rich as is.
The maladaptive tendency in stage eight is called presumption. This
is what happens when a person "presumes" ego integrity without
actually facing the difficulties of old age. The malignant tendency is called disdain,
by which Erikson means a contempt of life, one's own or anyone's.
Someone who approaches death without fear has the strength Erikson calls wisdom.
He calls it a gift to children, because "healthy children will not fear
life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death." He suggests
that a person must be somewhat gifted to be truly wise, but I would like to
suggest that you understand "gifted" in as broad a fashion as possible:
I have found that there are people of very modest gifts who have taught me a
great deal, not by their wise words, but by their simple and gentle approach to
life and death, by their "generosity of spirit."
Discussion
I can't think of anyone, other than Jean Piaget, who has promoted the stage
approach to development more than Erik Erikson. And yet stages are not at all a
popular concept among personality theorists. Of the people reviewed in this
text, only Sigmund and Anna Freud fully share his convictions. Most theorists
prefer an incremental or gradual approach to development, and speak of
"phases" or "transitions" rather than of clearly marked
stages..
But there are certain segments of life that are fairly easy to identify,
that do have the necessary quality of biologically determined timing.
Adolescence is "preprogrammed" to occur when it occurs, as is birth
and, very possibly, natural death. The first year of life has some special,
fetus-like qualities, and the last year of life includes certain
"catastrophic" qualities.
If we stretch the meaning of stages to include certain logical sequences,
i.e. things that happen in a certain order, not because they are biologically
so programmed, but because they don't make sense any other way, we can make an
even better case: weaning and potty training have to precede the independence
from mother required by schooling; one is normally sexually mature before
finding a lover, normally finds a lover before having children, and necessarily
has children before enjoying their leaving!
And if we stretch the meaning of stages even further to include social
"programming" as well as biological, we can include periods of
dependence and schooling and work and retirement as well. So stretched, it is
no longer a difficult matter to come up with seven or eight stages; Only now,
of course, you'd be hard pressed to call them stages, rather than
"phases" or something equally vague.
It is, in fact, hard to defend Erikson's eight stages if we accept the
demands of his understanding of what stages are. In different cultures, even
within cultures, the timing can be quite different: In some countries, babies
are weaned at six months and potty trained at nine months; in others, they
still get the breast at five and potty training involves little more than
taking it outside. At one time in our own culture, people were married at
thirteen and had their first child by fifteen. Today, we tend to postpone
marriage until thirty and rush to have our one and only child before forty. We
look forward to many years of retirement; in other times and other places,
retirement is unknown.
And yet Erikson's stages do seem to give us a framework. We can talk about
our culture as compared with others', or today as compared with a few centuries
ago, by looking at the ways in which we differ relative to the
"standard" his theory provides. Erikson and other researchers have
found that the general pattern does in fact hold across cultures and times, and
most of us find it quite familiar. In other words, his theory meets one of the
most important standards of personality theory, a standard sometimes more
important than "truth:" It is useful.
It also offers us insights we might not have noticed otherwise. For example,
you may tend to think of his eight stages as a series of tasks that don't
follow any particularly logical course. But if you divide the lifespan into two
sequences of four stages, you can see a real pattern, with a child development
half and an adult development half.
In stage I, the infant must learn that "it" (meaning the world,
especially as represented by mom and dad and itself) is "okay." In
stage II, the toddler learns "I can do," in the here-and-now. In
stage III, the preschooler learns "I can plan," and project him or
herself into the future. In stage IV, the school-age child learns "I can
finish" these projections. In going through these four stages, the child
develops a competent ego, ready for the larger world.
In the adult half of the scheme, we expand beyond the ego. Stage V, is
concerned with establishing something very similar to "it is okay:"
The adolescent must learn that "I am okay," a conclusion predicated
on successful negotiation of the preceding four stages. In stage VI, the young
adult must learn to love, which is a sort of social "I can do," in
the here-and-now. In stage VII, the adult must learn to extend that love into
the future, as caring. And in stage VIII, the old person must learn to
"finish" him- or herself as an ego, and establish a new and broader
identity. We could borrow Jung's term, and say that the second half of live is
devoted to realizing one's self.
Erikson is an excellent writer and will capture your imagination whether you
are convinced by his Freudian side or not. The two books that lay out his
theory are Childhood and Society and Identity: Youth and Crisis.
These are more like collections of essays on subjects as varied as Native
American tribes, famous people like William James and Adolph Hitler,
nationality, race, and gender.
His most famous books are two studies in "Psychohistory," Young
Man Luther on Martin Luther, and Ghandi's Truth.
Course Outline: prelims | midterm | finals
Handouts: week1 | week2
| week3 | week4
| week5 | week6 | week7 | week8 | week9 | week10 | week11 | week12 | week 13 |
week 14
Grades: Monday |
Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday