Erik Erikson
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One of the most influential theorists in psychology and human development was Erik Erikson. Having come out of the Freudian tradition, Erikson expanded and refined Freud's stage theory by revealing more of the child's tasks at each stage of ego growth. In addition to clarifying each of Freud's stages, he added three new stages to complete the adult years of life mostly ignored by Freud. While closely following the outline of the original Freudian stages of development, Erikson went beyond the Freudian idea of sexuality as the primary driving force. Instead, he focused more on a series of relationships that certain tasks have at each stage of development. Being more concerned with the cognitive functioning of the child, Erikson focused on the growth of the ego through cognitive tasks, or crises as he called them, instead of the biological sex drives, as did Freud (Zeig, ed., 1982). This paper will introduce some biographical background on Erikson and his theories in order to establish a reference with other works. It will also summarize the eight stages of life that Erikson developed in order to see how they compare with other existing stage theories in order and content. In addition, this paper will cover some theoretical issues that affect the manner in which Erikson's work is viewed. Also, the strengths and shortcomings of the practical applications of Erikson's work will be discussed in order to establish the best possible ways it can be applied. To conclude t
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the Oedipal conflicts were followed by a period of libidinal inactivity that he called the Latency Stage. Erikson, on the other hand, maintains that this stage is a decisive one for ego growth. The crisis at this stage is Industry vs. Inferiority. At this stage children forget their past hopes and wishes and instead focus on learning the useful skills and tools of the wider culture. Here Erikson put his study of preliterate societies to use as he pointed out that children in such societies learned how to fish and hunt while in modern technological societies children focus on going to school to master reading writing and mathematics (Erikson, 1950, pp. 259 60). In both cases the work is meaningful to the society. In this stage the children develop the ego to work within society and to form peer relationships. The danger here that makes up the crisis is that of having an excessive feeling of inferiority due to failures in the classroom or playground. It is here that the child's teachers and caregivers should provide the encouragement to continue trying even in the face of failure (Ochse and Pflug, 1986).
The next stage is the stage of puberty that Freud called the Genital Stage. To Freud, this was a time of physiological c
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Approximate Word count = 2646
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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