According to Erik Erikson’s theory of personality development, personality development continues throughout life, where one stage, in the case of a successful resolution of internal contradictions, replaces another.
Detstvo
1. Trust and distrust
The first stage of human development corresponds to the oral phase of classical psychoanalysis and usually covers the first year of life. During this period, Erickson believes, a parameter of social interaction develops, the positive pole of which is trust, and the negative pole is mistrust.
The degree of trust that a child gets in the world around him, in other people and in himself, largely depends on the care shown to him. The baby who gets everything he wants, whose needs are quickly met, who never feels sick for long, who is cradled and caressed, played and talked to, feels that the world is, in general, a cozy place, and people are sympathetic and helpful creatures. . If the child does not receive proper care, does not meet with loving care, then distrust is developed in him — fearfulness and suspicion in relation to the world in general, to people in particular, and he carries this distrust with him to other stages of his development.
It must be emphasized, however, that the question of which principle will prevail is not decided once and for all in the first year of life, but arises anew at each subsequent stage of development. This brings both hope and danger. A child who comes to school with a sense of apprehension may gradually be imbued with confidence in some teacher who does not allow injustice towards children. In doing so, he can overcome the initial incredulity. But on the other hand, a child who has developed a trusting approach to life in infancy may be imbued with distrust in later stages of development, if, say, in the event of a divorce of parents, an atmosphere is created in the family overflowing with mutual accusations and scandals.
A favorable resolution to this conflict is hope.
Achieving balance
2. Independence and indecision (autonomy and doubt).
The second stage covers the second and third years of life, coinciding with the anal phase of Freudianism. During this period, Erickson believes, the child develops independence based on the development of his motor and mental abilities. At this stage, the child masters various movements, learns not only to walk, but also to climb, open and close, push and pull, hold, release and throw. Kids enjoy and are proud of their new abilities and strive to do everything themselves: unwrap lollipops, get vitamins from a bottle, flush the toilet, etc. If parents let the child do what he is capable of doing, rather than rushing him, the child develops the feeling that he owns his muscles, his impulses, himself, and to a large extent his environment — that is, he gains autonomy.
But if educators show impatience and rush to do for the child what he himself is capable of, he develops shame and indecision. Of course, there are no parents who under no circumstances rush the child, but the child’s psyche is not so unstable as to react to rare events. Only if, in an effort to protect the child from effort, the parents show constant diligence, unreasonably and tirelessly scolding him for «accidents», whether it be a wet bed, soiled pants, a broken cup or spilled milk, does the child consolidate a sense of shame in front of other people. and lack of confidence in their ability to manage themselves and the environment.
If the child leaves this stage with a great deal of uncertainty, then this will adversely affect the independence of both the teenager and the adult in the future. Conversely, a child who has learned from this stage much more independence than shame and indecision will be well prepared for the development of independence in the future. And again, the correlation between independence, on the one hand, and modesty and uncertainty, on the other, established at this stage, can be changed in one direction or another by subsequent events.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is will.
3. Enterprise and guilt (in another translation — Enterprise and inadequacy).
The third stage usually occurs between the ages of four and five. The preschooler has already acquired many physical skills, he knows how to ride a tricycle, and run, and cut with a knife, and throw stones. He begins to invent activities for himself, and not just respond to the actions of other children or imitate them. His ingenuity manifests itself both in speech and in the ability to fantasize. The social dimension of this stage, says Erickson, develops between enterprise on one extreme and guilt on the other. How parents react to the child’s undertakings at this stage largely depends on which of these qualities will prevail in his character. Children who are given the initiative in choosing motor activities, who run, wrestle, romp, ride a bicycle, sled, skate, develop and consolidate their entrepreneurial spirit at will. It is also reinforced by the willingness of parents to answer the child’s questions (intellectual enterprise), and not to interfere with his fantasies and start games. But if the parents show the child that his motor activity is harmful and undesirable, that his questions are intrusive, and his games are stupid, he begins to feel guilty and carries this feeling of guilt into further stages of life.
Favorable resolution of this conflict is the goal.
4. Skill and inferiority (creativity and inferiority complex).
The fourth stage is the age from six to eleven years old, the years of elementary school. Classical psychoanalysis calls them the latent phase. During this period, the son’s love for his mother and jealousy for his father (for girls, on the contrary) is still in a latent state. During this period, the child develops the ability for deduction, for organized games and regulated activities. Only now, for example, children are properly learning to play pebbles and other games where it is necessary to follow the order. Erickson says that the psychosocial dimension of this stage is characterized by skill on the one hand and a sense of inferiority on the other.
During this period, the child becomes more interested in how things work, how they can be mastered, adapted to something. Robinson Crusoe is understandable and close to this age; in particular, the enthusiasm with which Robinson describes his activities in every detail corresponds to the child’s awakening interest in labor skills. When children are encouraged to make anything, build huts and aircraft models, cook, cook and needlework, when they are allowed to complete the work they have begun, they are praised and rewarded for the results, then the child develops skill and ability for technical creativity. On the contrary, parents who see in their children’s labor activity only «pampering» and «dirty», contribute to the development of a sense of inferiority in them.
At this age, however, the child’s environment is no longer limited to the home. Along with the family, other social institutions begin to play an important role in his age-related crises. Here Erickson again expands the scope of psychoanalysis, which until now has taken into account only the influence of parents on the development of the child. The stay of the child in school and the attitude that he meets there has a great influence on the balance of his psyche. A child who is not smart can be especially traumatized at school, even if his diligence is encouraged at home. He is not so dumb as to get into a school for mentally retarded children, but he learns the educational material more slowly than his peers and cannot compete with them. Continuous falling behind in class disproportionately develops in him a sense of inferiority.
On the other hand, a child whose tendency to make something has died out because of eternal ridicule at home can revive it at school thanks to the advice and help of a sensitive and experienced teacher. Thus, the development of this parameter depends not only on the parents, but also on the attitude of other adults.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is confidence.
Adolescence crisis
5. Personal identification and role confusion.
During the transition to the fifth stage (12-18 years), the child is faced, according to classical psychoanalysis, with the awakening of «love and jealousy» for parents. The successful solution of this problem depends on whether he finds the object of love in his own generation. Erickson does not deny the occurrence of this problem in adolescents, but points out that there are others. The adolescent matures physiologically and mentally, and in addition to the new sensations and desires that result from this maturation, he develops new views on things, a new approach to life. An important place in the new features of the adolescent psyche is occupied by his interest in the thoughts of other people, in what they think of themselves. Adolescents can create for themselves a mental ideal of a family, religion, society, in comparison with which far from perfect, but really existing families, religions and societies lose a lot. The adolescent is able to develop or adopt theories and worldviews that promise to reconcile all contradictions and create a harmonious whole. In short, the adolescent is an impatient idealist who believes that creating an ideal in practice is no more difficult than imagining it in theory.
Erickson believes that the parameter of connection with the environment that arises during this period fluctuates between the positive pole of identification «I» and the negative pole of role confusion. In other words, the teenager, who has acquired the ability to generalize, is faced with the task of combining everything that he knows about himself as a schoolboy, son, sportsman, friend, boy scout, newspaper man, and so on. He must collect all these roles into a single whole, comprehend it, connect it with the past and project it into the future. If a young person successfully copes with this task — psychosocial identification, then he will have a sense of who he is, where he is and where he is going.
In contrast to the previous stages, where parents had a more or less direct influence on the outcome of developmental crises, their influence now turns out to be the most indirect. If, thanks to parents, a teenager has already developed trust, independence, enterprise and skill, then his chances of identification, that is, of recognizing his own individuality, increase significantly.
The opposite is true for the distrustful, shy, insecure teenager, full of guilt and the consciousness of his inferiority. Therefore, preparation for comprehensive psychosocial identification in adolescence should begin, in fact, from the moment of birth.
If, due to an unsuccessful childhood or a difficult life, a teenager cannot solve the problem of identification and define his “I”, then he begins to show symptoms of role confusion and uncertainty in understanding who he is and what environment he belongs to. This confusion is often seen in juvenile delinquents. Girls who show promiscuity in adolescence very often have a fragmented idea of their personality and do not correlate their promiscuity with either their intellectual level or their value system. In some cases, young people tend to «negative identification», that is, they identify their «I» with an image that is opposite to that which parents and friends would like to see.
But sometimes it’s better to identify with a «hippie,» with a «juvenile delinquent,» even with a «drug addict,» than not having a «I» at all.
However, someone who does not acquire a clear idea of his personality in adolescence is not yet doomed to remain restless for the rest of his life. And the one who recognized his «I» as a teenager will certainly encounter facts on his life path that contradict or even threaten his idea of himself. Perhaps Erickson, more than any other theoretical psychologists, emphasizes that life is a continuous change of all its aspects and that the successful solution of problems at one stage does not guarantee that a person will be saved from the emergence of new problems at other stages of life or the emergence of new solutions for old, already solved ones. seemed to be a problem.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is loyalty.
Middle age conflicts
6. Intimacy and loneliness.
The sixth stage of the life cycle is the onset of maturity—in other words, the period of courtship and the early years of family life, that is, from the end of adolescence to the beginning of middle age. Classical psychoanalysis says nothing new or, in other words, nothing important about this stage and the one that follows it. But Erickson, taking into account the identification of the “I” that has already taken place at the previous stage and the inclusion of a person in labor activity, points to a parameter specific to this stage, which is concluded between the positive pole of closeness and the negative pole of loneliness.
By intimacy, Erickson doesn’t just mean physical intimacy. In this concept, he includes the ability to take care of another person and share everything essential with him without fear of losing himself in the process. It is the same with intimacy as with identification: success or failure at this stage does not depend directly on the parents, but only on how successfully the person went through the previous stages. Just as in the case of identification, social conditions can make it easier or harder to achieve intimacy. This concept is not necessarily associated with sexual attraction, but extends to friendship. Between fellow soldiers who fought side by side in hard battles, such close ties are very often formed that can serve as an example of closeness in the broadest sense of the term. But if a person does not achieve intimacy either in marriage or in friendship, then, according to Erickson, loneliness becomes his lot — the state of a person who has no one to share his life with and no one to care for.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is love.
7. Universal humanity and self-absorption (performance and stagnation).
The seventh stage is a mature age, that is, already the period when the children have become teenagers, and the parents have firmly associated themselves with a certain occupation. At this stage, a new dimension of personality appears with universal humanity at one end of the scale and self-absorption at the other.
Erickson calls universal humanity the ability of a person to be interested in the fate of people outside the family circle, to think about the life of future generations, the forms of the future society and the structure of the future world. Such an interest in new generations is not necessarily associated with the presence of their own children — it can exist for everyone who actively cares for young people and for making life and work easier for people in the future. The one who has not developed this sense of belonging to humanity focuses on himself and his main concern is the satisfaction of his needs and his own comfort.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is caring.
8. Wholeness and hopelessness.
The eighth and last stage in Erickson’s classification is the period when the main work of life is over and for a person there comes a time for reflection and fun with grandchildren, if any. The psychosocial dimension of this period lies between wholeness and hopelessness. The feeling of wholeness, meaningfulness of life arises in someone who, looking back at the past, feels satisfaction. The one to whom the life lived seems to be a chain of missed opportunities and unfortunate blunders, realizes that it is already too late to start all over again and the lost cannot be returned. Such a person is overcome by despair at the thought of how his life could have developed, but did not.
The favorable resolution of this conflict is wisdom.