ERIK ERIKSON
-
Born: June 15, 1902, southern Germany.
Suffered “Aggravated Identity Crisis”
1933, married Joan Serson
Never knew his biological father.
Speaks mostly GERMAN (immigrated in America
during the rise of fascism in Germany).
At his house, he has a flag on Denmark
No formal training in psychoanalysis
Undergone psychoanalysis with Anna Freud.
Had a child with down syndrome (Neil), only the
eldest knew. Died at the age of 20; 2 of his
children who has no idea prepared the burial of
their sibling.
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
-
-
Erikson coined the term “IDENTITY CRISIS”
Post-freudian
theory
extended
Freud’s
psychosexual development.
This suggested that at each stage, a specific
psychosocial struggle contributes to the
formation of personality.
Erikson place more importance in social and
historical influences.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ON POSTFREUDIAN THEORY
-
FREUD: Ego – being a diplomat with no power of
its own.
ERIKSON: Ego – more powerful, it is a positive
force that create a self identity or a sense of “I”.
o Ego helps us adapt to various conflicts
and crises of life and keeps us from
losing our individuality to the leveling
forces of society.
o During Childhood, Ego is weak, pliable,
and fragile, but by adolescence it should
begin to take form and gain strength.
o Throughout our life, it unifies personality
and guards against indivisibility.
o Defined the EGO as a person’s ability to
unify experiences and actions in an
adaptive manner.
ASPECTS OF EGO:
-
BODY EGO
o
-
EGO IDEAL
o
-
Refers to experiences with our body; a
way of seeing our physical self as
different for other people.
Represents the image we have of
ourselves in comparison with an
established ideal; it is responsible for our
being satisfied or dissatisfied not only
with our physical self but with our entire
personal identity.
EGO IDENTITY
o
Is the image we have of ourselves in the
variety of social roles we play.
*Rapid changes in these aspects happen during
adolescence.*
SOCIETY’S INFLUENCE
-
-
-
-
To Erikson, the ego exists as potential at birth.
but it must emerge from within a cultural
environment.
Different societies, with their variations in childrearing practices, tend to shape personalities
that fit the needs and values Of their culture.
Philippine's way Of child-rearing is very different
with the west therefore the ego develops in a
certain way that is different with the West.
Erikson (1968, 1974) argued that historically all
tribes or nations, including the United States,
have developed what he called a pseudospecies:
that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated
by a particular society that it is somehow chosen
to be the human species.
EPIGENETIC PRINCIPLE
-
-
Epigenetic development implies a step-by-step
growth of fetal organs.
Rather, it develops, or should develop, according
to a predetermined rate and in a fixed sequence.
If the eyes, liver, or other organs do not develop
during that critical period for their development,
then they will never attain proper maturity.
The ego follows the path of epigenetic
development, with each stage developing at its
proper time.
-
-
One stage emerges from and is built upon a
previous stage, but it does not replace that
earlier stage.
This implies that failure or success on each stage
will contribute greatly on the next stage of
development.
1. INFANCY (0 – 1 Y/O)
-
Paralleling Freud’s oral phase of development.
Erikson’s expanded view of infancy is expressed
in the term oral-sensory.
-
ORAL SENSORY
o
STAGES OF PSYCHOSOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT
-
-
-
-
-
Growth takes place according to the EPIGENETIC
PRINCIPLE.
In every stage of life there is an interaction of
opposites - that is, a conflict between A
SYNTONIC (HARMONIOUS) ELEMENT and a
DYSTONIC (DISRUPTIVE) ELEMENT.
At each stage, the conflict between the dystonic
and syntonic elements produces an ego quality
or ego strength, which Erikson referred to as a
BASIC STRENGTH.
Too little basic strength at any one stage results
in a CORE PATHOLOGY for that stage.
Although Erikson referred to his eight stages as
psychosocial stages, he never lost sight of the
biological aspect of human development.
Events in earlier stages do not cause later
personality development. Ego identity is shaped
by a multiplicity of conflicts and events- past,
present, and anticipated.
During each stage, but especially from
adolescence forward, personality development
is characterized by an identity crisis, which
Erikson (1968) called "a turning point, a crucial
period of increased vulnerability and heightened
potential".
-
-
expanded form of oral stage of Freud;
whereas Freud said that children are
focused in the mouth, Erikson said that
all sensory organs also "take in" the
world.
o Oral-sensory stage is characterized by
two modes of incorporation—receiving
and accepting.
▪ 1. Receiving - infants can receive
even in the absence of other
people.
▪ 2. Accepting - implies a social
context. Infants not only must
get, but also must get someone
else to give.
Infants not only must get, but they also must get
someone else to give. This early training in
interpersonal relations helps them learn to
eventually become givers.
BASIC TRUST (SYNTONIC)
MISTRUST (DYSTONIC)
o
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
1. Infancy (0 – 1)
2. Early Childhood (2 – 3)
3. Play Age (3 – 5)
4. School Age
5. Adolescence
6. Early Adulthood
7. Adulthood
8. Old Age
-
BASIC
Infant's most significant interpersonal
relations are with their primary
caregiver, usually their mother.
▪ If they realize that their mother
will provide food regularly, then
they begin to learn basic trust;
▪ In contrast, they learn basic
mistrust if they find no
correspondence between their
oral-sensory needs and their
environment.
HOPE (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
VS.
By having both painful and pleasurable
experiences, infants learn to expect that
future distresses will meet with
satisfactory outcomes.
WITHDRAWAL (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
With little to hope for, they will retreat
from the outside world and begin the
journey toward serious psychological
disturbance.
2. EARLY YOUNG CHILDHOOD (2 – 3 Y/O)
-
A period paralleling Freud’s anal stage.
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ANAL–URETHRAL–MUSCULAR MODE
o
-
-
Erikson took a broader view. To him,
young children receive pleasure not only
from mastering the sphincter muscle but
also from mastering other body
functions such as urinating, walking,
throwing, holding, and so on.
At this time, children learn to control their body,
especially in relation to cleanliness and mobility.
Early childhood is more than a time of toilet
training; it is also a time of learning to walk, run,
hug parents, and hold on to toys and other
objects.
AUTONOMY (SYNTONIC) VS SHAME AND
DOUBT (DYSTONIC)
3. PLAY AGE (3 – 5 Y/O)
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A period covering the same time as Freud’s
phallic phase—roughly ages 3–5.
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GENITAL-LOCOMOTOR MODE
o
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-
-
o
o
-
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Autonomy – Self-expression
Shame – a feeling of self-consciousness
of being looked at and exposed.
o Doubt – the feeling of not being certain,
the feeling that something remains
hidden and cannot be seen.
As children stubbornly express their anal–
urethral–muscular mode, they are likely to find a
culture that attempts to inhibit some of their
self-expression.
o “Nakakahiya” attitude of child-rearing in
the Philippines.
WILL (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
This step is the beginning of free will and
¬willpower— but only a beginning.
Mature willpower and a significant
measure of free will are reserved for
later stages of development, but they
originate in the rudimentary will that
emerges during early childhood.
COMPULSION (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
Too little will and too much compulsivity
carry forward into the play age as lack of
purpose and into the school age as lack
of confidence.
-
Erikson believed that the Oedipus
complex is but one of several important
developments during play age.
Erikson (1968) contended that, in addition to
identifying with their parents, preschool-age
children are developing locomotion skills,
language skills, curiosity, imagination, and the
ability to set goals.
Oedipus complex - is a drama played out in the
child’s imagination and includes the budding
understanding of such basic concepts as
reproduction, growth, future, and death.
o The Oedipus and castration complexes,
therefore, are not always to be taken
literally.
The interest that play-age children have in
genital activity is accompanied by their
increasing facility at locomotion. They can now
move with ease, running, jumping, and climbing
with no conscious effort; and their play shows
both initiative and imagination.
INITIATIVE (SYNTONIC) VS. GUILT (DYSTONIC)
o
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PURPOSE (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
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Although they begin to adopt initiative in
their selection and pursuit of goals,
many goals, such as marrying their
mother or father or leaving home, must
be either repressed or delayed. The
consequence of these taboo and
inhibited goals is guilt.
Children now play with a purpose,
competing at games in order to win or
to be on top.
INHIBITION (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
if guilt is the dominant element, children
may become compulsively moralistic or
overly inhibited.
4. SCHOOL AGE (6 – 13 Y/O)
-
Matches the latency years of Freud’s theory.
At this age, the social world of children is
expanding beyond family to include peers,
teachers, and other adult models.
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-
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Latency - Sexual latency is important because it
allows children to divert their energies to
learning the technology of their culture and the
strategies of their social interactions.
As children work and play to acquire these
essentials, they begin to form a picture of
themselves as competent or incompetent.
These self-images are the origin of ego identity—
that feeling of “I” or “me-ness” that evolves
more fully during adolescence.
INDUSTRY (SYNTONIC) VS.
(DYSTONIC)
o
o
o
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INFERIORITY
Although school age is a period of little
sexual development, it is a time of
tremendous social growth.
Industry
▪ quality, means industriousness,
a willingness to remain busy
with something and to finish a
job.
Inferiority
▪ feelings of inadequacy if their
work
is
insufficient
to
accomplish their goals
the confidence to use one’s physical and
cognitive abilities to solve the problems
that accompany school age.
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-
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INERTIA (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
If the struggle between industry and
inferiority favors either inferiority or an
overabundance of industry, children are
likely to give up and regress to an earlier
stage of development.
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5. ADOLESCENCE (14 – 18 Y/O)
-
-
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He saw adolescence as a period of social latency.
Adolescence
o the period from puberty to young
adulthood, is one of the most crucial
developmental stages because, by the
end of this period, a person must gain a
firm sense of ego identity.
Erikson (1982) saw adolescence as a period of
social latency, just as he saw school age as a time
of sexual latency.
Adolescence is an adaptive phase of personality
development, a period of trial and error.
Puberty - defined as genital maturation, plays a
relatively minor role in Erikson’s concept of
adolescence.
Puberty is important psychologically because it
triggers expectations of adult roles yet ahead—
roles that are essentially social and can be filled
only through a struggle to attain ego identity
IDENTITY
(SYNTONIC)
CONFUSION (DYSTONIC)
o
COMPETENCE (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
-
-
-
-
VS.
IDENTITY
The search for ego identity reaches a
climax during adolescence as young
people strive to find out who they are
and who they are not.
In this search, young people draw from a variety
of earlier self-images that have been accepted or
rejected.
Thus, the seeds of identity begin to sprout during
infancy and continue to grow through childhood,
the play age, and the school age.
Sources of identity:
o (1)
adolescents’
affirmation
or
repudiation of childhood identifications
and
o (2) their historical and social contexts,
which encourage conformity to certain
standards.
Identity is defined both positively and negatively,
as adolescents are deciding what they want to
become and what they believe while also
discovering what they do not wish to be and
what they do not believe.
Identity confusion
o is a syndrome of problems that includes
a divided self-image, an inability to
establish intimacy, a sense of time
urgency, a lack of concentration on
required tasks, and a rejection of family
or community standards.
Although identity confusion is a necessary part of
our search for identity, too much confusion can
lead to pathological adjustment in the form of
regression to earlier stages of development.
We may postpone the responsibilities of
adulthood and drift aimlessly from one job to
another, from one sex partner to another, or
from one ideology to another.
Conversely, if we develop the proper ratio of
identity-to-identity confusion, we will have
o
o
o
o
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faith in one's ideology.
ROLE REPUDIATION (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
blocks one’s ability to synthesize various
self-images and values into a workable
identity. Role repudiation can take the
form of either diffidence or defiance
(Erikson, 1982).
▪ Diffidence –
• is an extreme lack of
self-trust
or
selfconfidence
and
is
expressed as shyness or
hesitancy to express
oneself.
▪ Defiance
• - is the act of rebelling
against
authority.
Defiant
adolescents
stubbornly hold to
socially unacceptable
beliefs and practices
simply because these
beliefs and practices are
unacceptable.
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-
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For some people, this stage is a relatively short
time, lasting perhaps only a few years. For
others, young adulthood may continue for
several decades.
Genitality - much of the sexual activity during
adolescence is an expression of one's own search
for identity and is basically self-serving.
o > True genitality can develop only during
young
adulthood
when
it
is
distinguished by mutual trust and a
stable sharing of sexual satisfactions
with a loved person.
VS.
ISOLATION
Intimacy - the ability to fuse one's
identity with that of another person
without fear of losing it.
o because intimacy can be achieved only
after people have formed a stable ego,
the infatuations often found in young
adolescents are not true intimacy.
o people who are unsure of other identity
may either shy away from psychosocial
intimacy or desperately seek intimacy
through meaningless sexual encounters.
Mature intimacy
o involves sacrifice, compromise, and
commitment within a relationship of
two equals
Isolation
o the incapacity to take chances with one's
identity by sharing true intimacy
o Again, some degree of isolation is
essential before one can acquire mature
love.
o Too much togetherness can diminish a
person's sense of ego identity, which
leads that person to a psychosocial
regression and an inability to face the
next developmental stage.
LOVE (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
o
o
6. EARLY YOUNG ADULTHOOD (19 – 30 Y/O)
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INTIMACY (SYNTONIC)
(DYSTONIC)
o
FIDELITY (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
(1) faith in some sort of ideological
principle,
(2) the ability to freely decide how we
should behave,
(3) trust in our peers and adults who give
us advice regarding goals and
aspirations, and
(4) confidence in our choice of an
eventual occupation.
-
Erikson defined love as mature devotion
that overcomes basic differences
between men and women.
Mature love means commitment,
sexual
passion,
cooperation,
competition, and friendship.
Although love includes intimacy,
it also contains some degree of
isolation, because each partner is
permitted to retain a separate
identity.
EXCLUSIVITY (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
o
Some
exclusivity,
however,
is
necessary for intimacy: that is, a
person must be able to exclude certain
people, activities, and ideas in order to
develop a strong sense of identity.
Exclusivity
becomes
pathological
when it blocks one's ability to
cooperate, compete, or compromise all
prerequisite
ingredients
for
intimacy and love.
o
7. ADULTHOOD (31 – 60 Y/O)
-
Adulthood
o that time when people begin to take
their
place
in
society
and assume responsibility for whatever
society produces.
-
Procreativity
o
o
o
-
refers to more than genital contact with
an
intimate
partner.
It
includes assuming responsibility for the
care of offspring that result from that
sexual
contact.
Ideally, procreation should follow from
the mature intimacy and love
established
during the preceding stage.
Obviously, people are physically capable
of producing offspring before they are
psychologically ready to care for the
welfare of these children.
-
Generativity
▪ the generation of new beings as
well
as
new
products and new ideas
▪ Generativity which is concerned
with establishing and guiding
the
▪ Generativity grows out of earlier
syntonic qualities such as
intimacy
and
identity. As noted earlier,
intimacy calls for the ability to
fuse one’s ego to that
of another person without fear
of losing it.
▪ next generation, includes the
procreation of children, the
production
of
work,
and the creation of new things
and ideas that contribute to the
CARE (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
-
a widening commitment to take care of
the persons, the products, and the ideas
one has learned to care for.
One must have hope, will, purpose, competence,
fidelity, and love in order to take care of that
which one cares for.
REJECTIVITY (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
o
GENERATIVITY (SYNTONIC) VS. STAGNATION
(DYSTONIC)
o
building
of
a
better world.
Self-absorption or stagnation
▪ the generational cycle of
productivity
and
creativity is crippled when
people become too absorbed in
themselves,
too
self-indulgent.
o
is the unwillingness to take care of
certain
persons or groups (Erikson, 1982).
Rejectivity is manifested as selfcenteredness,
provincialism,
or
pseudospeciation: that is, the belief that
other
groups
of
people
are
inferior to one’s own.
It is responsible for much of human
hatred, destruction, atrocities, and
wars.
8. OLD AGE (60 Y/O – DEATH)
-
GENERALIZED SENSUALITY
o
o
o
o
one may infer that it means to take
pleasure
in
a
variety
of
different physical sensations—sights,
sounds, tastes, odors, embraces, and
perhaps
genital
stimulation.
Men become more nurturant and more
acceptant of the pleasures of nonsexual
relationships, including those with their
grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Women become more interested and
involved in politics, finance, and world
affairs
(Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986).
A generalized sensual attitude, however,
is dependent on one’s ability to hold
things
together, that is, to maintain integrity in
the face of despair.
-
INTEGRITY
(DYSTONIC)
o
o
o
-
VS.
DESPAIR
At
the
end
of
life,
the
dystonic quality of despair may prevail,
but for people with a strong ego
identity who have learned intimacy and
who have taken care of both
people and things, the syntonic quality
of integrity will predominate.
Integrity
▪ a feeling of wholeness and
coherence, an ability to hold
together one’s sense of “I-ness”
despite diminishing physical and
intellectual powers.
▪ Ego integrity
• is sometimes difficult to
maintain when people
see that they are losing
familiar aspects of their
existence: for example,
spouse, friends, physical
health, body strength,
mental
alertness,
independence,
and
social usefulness.
Despair - literally means to be without
hope; the last dystonic quality of the life
cycle, is in the opposite corner from
hope, a person’s first basic strength.
WISDOM (BASIC STRENGTH)
o
-
(SYNTONIC)
Erikson defined wisdom as “informed
and
detached
concern with life itself in the face of
death itself.
DISDAIN (CORE PATHOLOGY)
o
a reaction to feeling (and seeing others)
in an increasing state of being finished,
confused, helpless.” Disdain is a
continuation of rejectivity, the core
pathology of adulthood.