Walt Disney

If we read the biography of Walt Disney, Disney's World, by Leonard Mosley, we see many aspects of development (age-related changes) that occur in Disney's life. Many of these are directly applicable to psychosocial development theories, such as Erik Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development, Kohlberg's moral reasoning theory, Freud's psychoanalytic theories, and Maslow's self-actualization theory. Throughout Disney's life and development, we also see how environment and social learning affect personality formation.

Walt Disney suffered an austere childhood as the son of an austere Christian socialist hypocrite who regularly forced his sons to work and kept all the money for himself. Walt, himself, was getting up at 3:15am everyday to deliver papers for his father along with his brother Roy. The two were told their money was being kept in a "nest egg." The ten year old Walt also loved sweets and he took on a side route in secret which meant a 3am wakeup. When his brother Roy demanded their money, he was told by father Elias, they had hit hard times and it was not available. While Walt remained happy-go-lucky and filled with hope and enthusiasm during this period, neither he nor Roy would ever have successful relationships with business partners ever again. Both he and Walt were betrayed in business confidences that saw them file for bankruptcy and lose millions of dollars before forming their own company. Walt's woul

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All contend that identity formation is the foundation of healthy psychosocial development in later life. Erikson's life cycle stages predict at what stage or age we might begin to experience changes in personality. Adulthood is broken into three stages, each with its own psychosocial goal. In intimacy versus isolation, the crisis revolves around "whether one can develop the capacity to share intimacy with others. Successful resolution of this crisis should promote empathy and openness, rather than manipulativeness and social isolation" (Weiten 412). After marriage Walt became more manipulative and isolated than ever before. Gone was his subservient nature he had developed under his father's dictatorial command. He also withdrew from his brother and had few close friends, "From the moment he came back from his honeymoon, he began relying less and less upon Roy's advice and judgment �and he made it plain to everyone, that from now on, he was in charge of the show" (Mosley 90). Some of Disney's inflated sense of ego may have been developed by the Hollywood environment around him. While major studios were churning out pictures with more stars than in the firmament, Walt Disney was making feel-good cartoons. His over-confi

Category: Psychology - W