Stages of Development
Introduction to Erikson's 8 Stages
Stage
1. Oral-Sensory
2.Muscular-Anal
3. Locomotor
4. Latency
5. Adolescence
6. Young Adulthood
7. Middle Adulthood
8. Maturity
Ages
Basic
Conflict
Trust vs.
Mistrust
Birth to
12/18
months
18
Autonomy vs.
months Shame/Doubt
to 3years
3 to 6
Initiative vs.
years
Guilt
6 to 12 Industry vs.
years
Inferiority
12 to 18 Identity vs.
years
Role
Confusion
19 to 40 Intimacy vs.
years
Isolation
40 to 65 Generativity
years vs. Stagnation
65 to Ego-Integrity
death
vs. Despair
Important
Event
Feeding
Toilet
training
Independence
School
Peer relationships
Summary
The infant must form a first loving, trusting relationship with the
caregiver, or develop a sense of mistrust.
The child's energies are directed toward the development of physical
skills including walking, grasping, and rectal sphincter control. The child
learns control but may develop shame and doubt if not handled well.
The child continues to become more assertive and to take more initiative,
but may be too forceful, leading to guilt feelings.
The child must deal with demands to learn new skills or risk a sense of
inferiority failure and incompetence.
The teenager must achieve a sense of identity in occupation, sex-roles,
politics, and religion.
Love relationships The young adult must develop intimate relationships or suffer feelings of
isolation.
Parenting
Each adult must find some way to satisfy and support the next
generation.
Reflection on/and
acceptance of one's The culmination is a sense of one’s self as one is and of feeling fulfilled.
life
Erikson's theory consist of eight stages of development. Each stage is characterized by a different
conflict that must be resolved by the individual.When the environment makes new demands on people,
the conflicts arise. "The person is faced with a choice between two ways of coping with each crisis, an
adaptive, or maladaptive way. Only when each crisis is resolved, which involves a change in the
personality, does the person have sufficient strength to deal with the next stages of development"
(Schultz and Schultz, 1987). If a person is unable to resolve a conflict at a particular stage, they will
confront and struggle with it later in life.
Erikson downplays biological sexuality in favor of the psychosocial features of the conflict
between child and parents. Development extends throughout the life-span and is divided into periods or
stages. The amount of conflict in each stage determines whether the positive or negative pole is learned.
I. Infancy: first year (similar to oral stage)
A. Ego Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust. Crisis here does not mean overwhelming stress, but the medical
usage meaning a turning point. Major problem is dependency. Is the adult to be trusted?
B. Significant Task: Mutual affirmation of mother and child - a big emphasis on visual contact.
Trust gives capacity for faith.
C. Basic Strength: Hope. A basic confidence in the future. In concentration camps, "Going
Moslem" meant loss of hope and resulted in death.
D. Ritualization: Numinous. Ritualizations are recurring patterns of behavior characteristic of a
particular society (kissing, hugging, shaking hands, etc.). The work numinous means
"profound emotional experience". The first ritualization is the greeting of the mother - the
touch, smile, and eye-to-eye contact which assures "separateness transcended, yet
distinctiveness confirmed".
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Stages of Development
E. Ritualism: Idolism (idolatry). Ritualisms are exaggerated, rigid, inappropriate ritualizations.
Idolism is a distortion of the numinous reverence into adulation which gives an illusory
image of perfection.
F. Maldevelopment: Withdrawal. Maldevelopment is a basic weaknesses resulting from poor
resolution of the ego crisis. Withdrawal is "detaching" from others, similar to the problems
of schizophrenia.
G. Significant Relations: Maternal parent
II. Early Childhood: 2-->3, similar to anal stage; terrible twos where the child learns that terrible word
"No"
A. Ego Crisis: Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt
B. Significant Task: Differentiate right and wrong & to establish psychosocial independence.
Primitive independence comes by saying "No".
C. Strength: Will, courage - the ability to exercise both freedom of choice and self-restraint.
D. Ritualization: Judicious - forms basis of legal system (Many lawyers are "anal" types).
E. Ritualism: Legalism - being more concerned with the letter of the law rather than the spirit of
the law.
F. Maldevelopment: Compulsion
G. Significant Relations: Parents
III. Play Age: 3 --> 5, similar to phallic stage. Here children make up stories (with dolls, soldiers) and
play them out. Play to a child is like a blueprint to an adult - a trial universe. Also, children begin to use
the next most terrible word to parents: "Why?".
A. Ego Crisis: Initiative vs. Guilt
B. Significant Task: Role experimentation
C. Strength: Purpose (hopefully, to identify with proper role models (For me, Roy Rogers, John
Wayne - today-??)
D. Ritualization: Authenticity (Dramatic in 1982) - assume culturally accepted roles.
E. Ritualism: Impersonation - trying to be something that you are not.
F. Maldevelopment: Inhibition
G. Significant Relations: Basic family
IV. School Age: 6 --> 11, similar to latency stage. Here, children to go school and become more social.
Also, the are evaluated (grades) and work is emphasized.
A. Ego Crisis: Industry vs. Inferiority
B. Significant Task: Skill learning
C. Strength: Competence (craftsmanship). At this age, children know who is good at everything.
D. Ritualization: Formality. There are appropriate ways of doing things (above being simply right
or wrong).
E. Ritualism: Formalism (perfectionism)
F. Maldevelopment: Inertia
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Stages of Development
G. Significant Relations: School, neighborhood
V. Adolescence: 12 --> 18. Up to this stage, development mostly depends upon what is done to you.
From here on out, development depends primarily upon what you do. This is the stage when you are
neither a child nor an adult. It extends as society gets more complex.
A. Ego Crisis: Identity vs. Role confusion. In the search for identity, many adolescents go into a
period of withdrawing from responsibilities which Erikson called a "moratorium"
B. Significant Task: Establish philosophy of life. Adolescents think in terms of ideals. Problem is
that they don't have much experience.
C. Strength: Fidelity & devotion (to friends & causes)
D. Ritualization: Ideology. Adolescents tend to substitute ideals for experience. Ideals are
different from reality because they are conflict free.
E. Ritualism: Totalism. Extremely rigid, unbinding set of ideal - cults, or merely totally dropping
out.
F. Maldevelopment: Repudiation - by indifference or defiance.
G. Significant Relations: Peer groups
VI. Young Adulthood: 18 --> 35 - start a family
A. Ego Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
B. Significant Task: Establish mutually satisfying relationships - primarily marriage & friends.
C. Strength: Love (another) and Affiliation (others).
D. Ritualization: Affiliation - "I'm OK, You're OK"
E. Ritualism: elitism - status symbols, "Yuppies"
F. Maldevelopment: Exclusivity - world begins to shrink
G. Significant Relations: Marital partner, friends.
VII. Middle Adulthood: 35 --> 55. Work is now crucial. Spend most of life preparing for this stage, end
of life recovering from it. When you "are in charge".
A. Ego Crisis: Generativity vs. Stagnation - If a feeling of stagnation appears, the stage is set for a
"Midlife Crisis".
B. Significant Task: Perpetuate culture. Parents transmit values of culture through family (tame
kids) and work (establish stable environment).
C. Strength: Care (others) & Production (work)
D. Ritualization: Generationalism
E. Ritualism: Authoritism
F. Maldevelopment: Rejectivity - don't care for specific groups.
G. Significant Relations: Workplace - community & family
VIII. Late Adulthood: 65 --> death
A. Ego Crisis: Ego Integrity vs. despair. One major question on the final exam: "Was the trip
worth it?".
B. Significant Task: Completion of life
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Stages of Development
C. Strength: Wisdom. Wisdom is a detached concern for the whole of life (the world is now really
large). With wisdom, can accept death as the completion of life.
D. Ritualization: Integralism (philosophical). Grandchildren listen to grandparents tell stories.
E. Ritualism: Sapientism (dogmatism). When you know all the answers (go back to adolescence).
F. Maldevelopment: Disdain - a feeling that the trip was not worth it (to think of oneself as
unworthy).
G. Significant Relations: Mankind ("My-kind').
Stages of Cognitive Development
Much of your teaching depends on cognitive abilities -- sharing information with your students
and looking for signs that the information is understood. As a result, you should understand cognitive
stages.
Child psychologist Jean Piaget described the mechanism by which the mind processes new
information. He said that a person understands whatever information fits into his established view of the
world. When information does not fit, the person must reexamine and adjust his thinking to
accommodate the new information. Piaget described four stages of cognitive development and relates
them to a person's ability to understand and assimilate new information.
Sensorimotor: (birth to about age 2)
During this stage, the child learns about himself and his environment through motor and reflex
actions. Thought derives from sensation and movement. The child learns that he is separate from his
environment and that aspects of his environment -- his parents or favorite toy -- continue to exist even
though they may be outside the reach of his senses. Teaching for a child in this stage should be geared to
the sensorimotor system. You can modify behavior by using the senses: a frown, a stern or soothing
voice -- all serve as appropriate techniques.
Preoperational: (begins about the time the child starts to talk to about age 7)
Applying his new knowledge of language, the child begins to use symbols to represent objects.
Early in this stage he also personifies objects. He is now better able to think about things and events that
aren't immediately present. Oriented to the present, the child has difficulty conceptualizing time. His
thinking is influenced by fantasy -- the way he'd like things to be -- and he assumes that others see
situations from his viewpoint. He takes in information and then changes it in his mind to fit his ideas.
Teaching must take into account the child's vivid fantasies and undeveloped sense of time. Using neutral
words, body outlines and equipment a child can touch gives him an active role in learning.
Concrete: (about first grade to early adolescence)
During this stage, accommodation increases. The child develops an ability to think abstractly and
to make rational judgements about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to
manipulate physically to understand. In teaching this child, giving him the opportunity to ask questions
and to explain things back to you allows him to mentally manipulate information.
Formal Operations: (adolescence)
This stage brings cognition to its final form. This person no longer requires concrete objects to
make rational judgments. At his point, he is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Teaching
for the adolescent may be wide-ranging because he'll be able to consider many possibilities from several
perspectives.
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Stages of Development
Stages of Moral Development
I. Preconventional Level
At this level, the child is responsive to cultural rules and labels of good and bad, right or wrong,
but he interprets the labels in terms of either the physical or hedonistic consequences of action
(punishment, reward, exchange of favors) or the physical power of those who enunciate the rules and
labels. The level is divided into the following three stages:
Stage 0: Egocentric judgment. The child makes judgments of good on the basis of what he likes
and wants or what helps him, and bad on the basis of what he does not like or what hurts him. He has no
concept of rules or of obligations to obey or conform independent of his wish.
Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation. The physical consequences of action
determine its goodness or badness regardless of the human meaning or value of these consequences.
Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning deference to power are values in their own right, not in
terms of respect for an underlying moral order supported by punishment and authority (the latter is stage
4).
Stage 2: The instrumental relativist orientation. Right action consists of what instrumentally
satisfies one's own needs and occasionally the needs of others. Human relations are viewed in terms
such as those of the market place. Elements of fairness, reciprocity, and equal sharing are present, but
they are always interpreted in a physical, pragmatic way. Reciprocity is a matter of "you scratch my
back and I'll scratch your", not loyalty, gratitude, or justice.
II. Conventional Level
At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or
nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences. The attitude is
not only one of conformity to personal expectations and social order, but of loyalty to it, of actively
maintaining, supporting, and justifying the order and identifying with the persons or group involved in
it. The level consists of the following two stages:
Stage 3: The interpersonal concordance or "good boy-nice girl" orientation. Good behavior
is what pleases or helps others and is approved by them. There is much conformity to stereotypical
images of what is majority or "natural" behavior. Behavior is frequently judged by intention -- "he
means well" becomes important for the first time. One earns approval by being "nice".
Stage 4: The "law and order" orientation. The individual is oriented toward authority, fixed
rules, and the maintenance of the social order. Right behavior consists in doing one's duty, showing
respect for authority, and maintaining the given social order for its own sake.
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Stages of Development
III. Post-Conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Level.
The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and
application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the
individual's own identification with the group. The level has the two following stages:
Stage 5: The social-contract legalistic orientation (generally with utilitarian overtones).
Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been
critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. There is a clear awareness of the relativism of
personal values and opinions and a corresponding emphasis upon procedural rules for reaching
consensus. Aside from what is constitutionally and democratically agreed upon, right action is a matter
of personal values and opinions. The result is an emphasis upon the "legal point of view", but with an
additional emphasis upon the possibility of changing the law in terms of rational considerations of social
utility (rather than freezing it in terms of stage 4 "law and order"). Outside the legal realm, free
agreement, and contract, is the binding element of obligation. The "official" morality of the American
government and Constitution is at this stage.
Stage 6: The universal ethical-principle orientation. Right is defined by the decision of
conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical principles that appeal to logical comprehensiveness,
universality, and consistency. These principles are abstract and ethical (the Golden Rule, the categorical
imperative); they are not concrete moral rules like the Ten Commandments. At heart, these are universal
principles of justice, of the reciprocity and equality of the human rights, and of respect for the dignity of
human beings as individual persons.
Caution
Level I: Pre-conventional methods: The use of the words "the child is responsive" is so general
that the reader may wonder whether the author has and provides evidence that "every" child is
responsive. Does he assume that all age groups are concerned, that children of all cultures have been
assessed and that a significant number of children have been observed interpreting labels in terms as
indicated. If so, how many children, Boys and Girls, Caucasian or from all ethnic groups and/or of
different IQ, spoken or written language performance levels, and where have indeed been observed so as
to authorize the generalizations stated about the abstract "pre-conventional" level and stages?
Stage 0, 1 and 2: Egocentric judgment, punishment and obedience orientation, instrumental
relativist orientation:
Is this verified for a given percentage of various samples of children (How, when, where, by
whom) or is this valid for a very large "parent population" including representative samples of children,
mixing origin, years of schooling, personal status (orphan, one-parent family, only child and children
with brothers and sisters, in the US, Australia, Africa, Japan , China, etc.), health condition, physical
and/or mental skills development etc.? When was the data collected, how, by whom, using which
methods for observation, recording, analysis and comparisons?
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Stages of Development
Level II: Conventional level. The author switches from the words "the child is" to the words the
individual perceives. Does this include or exclude children of both sexes, all ages, members of all
cultural or only a few cultural groups? What year or in what years where the observations gathered,
recorded, analyzed and by whom? Would statistics be provided to support the generalizations stated?
Stage 3: The interpersonal concordance or "good boy-nice girl" orientation. Are the concepts of
"good boy" and/or "nice girls" observed similarly in most or many cultural environments? Are there
significant differences that have been noted in various cultural environments, periods, locations? Is
"meaning well" taken in account in a comparable way in different social settings?
Stage 4: Law and authority possibly refer to an array of beliefs, attitudes, reactions, strength and
structure of institutions? What is the data the author refers to when he writes "the individual" is oriented
towards authority, etc. Every individual? Everywhere? May "right behavior" refer to very different
concepts in diverse places, at different times?
Level III. Post-conventional, autonomous, or principle level. The emphasis on "legal point of
view",
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