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CONTENTS :    

Erik Homberger Erikson was born in 1902 near Frankfort, Germany to Danish parents. Erik studied art and a variety of languages during his school years, rather than science courses such as biology and chemistry. He did not prefer the atmosphere that formal schooling produced, so instead of going to college he traveled around Europe, keeping a diary of his experiences. After a year of doing this, he returned to Germany and enrolled in art school. After several years, Erikson began to teach art and other subjects to children of Americans who had come to Vienna for Freudian training. He was then admitted into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1933 he came to the U.S. and became Boston's first child analyst and obtained a position at the Harvard Medical School. Later on, he also held positions at institutions including Yale, Berkeley, and the Menninger Foundation. Erikson then returned to California to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto and later the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, where he was a clinician and psychiatric consultant.

Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist, which means that he accepts Freud's ideas as basically correct, including the more debatable ideas such as the Oedipal complex. However, In contrast to Freud's psychosexual stages, Erik Erikson believed we develop in eight psychosocial stages, which he called the epigenetic principle. Each stage consists of a crisis that must be faced. According to Erikson, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point of increased vulnerability and enhanced potential. The more an individual resolves the crises successfully, the healthier development will be. These eight stages are summarized in the table below:
 

Stage (age)	Psychosocial crisis	Significant relations	Psychosocial modalities	Psychosocial virtues	Maladaptations & malignancies
I (0-1) -- infant	trust vs mistrust	mother	to get, to give in return	hope, faith	sensory distortion -- withdrawal
II (2-3) -- toddler	autonomy vs shame and doubt	parents	to hold on, to let go	will, determination	impulsivity -- compulsion
III (3-6) -- preschooler	initiative vs guilt	family	to go after, to play	purpose, courage	ruthlessness -- inhibition
IV (7-12 or so) -- school-age child	industry vs inferiority	neighborhood and school	to complete, to make things together	competence	narrow virtuosity -- inertia
V (12-18 or so) -- adolescence	ego-identity vs role-confusion	peer groups, role models	to be oneself, to share oneself	fidelity, loyalty	fanaticism -- repudiation
VI (the 20’s) -- young adult	intimacy vs isolation	partners, friends	to lose and find oneself in a another	love	promiscuity -- exclusivity
VII (late 20’s to 50’s) -- middle adult	generativity vs self-absorption	household, workmates	to make be, to take care of	care	overextension -- rejectivity
VIII (50’s and beyond) -- old adult	integrity vs despair	mankind or “my kind”	to be, through having been, to face not being	wisdom	presumption -- despair

Trust versus mistrust is Erikson’s first psychosocial stage, which is experienced in the first year of life. A sense of trust requires a feeling of physical comfort and a minimal amount of fear and apprehension about the future. Trust in infancy sets the stage for a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good and pleasant place to live.

Autonomy versus shame and doubt is Erikson’s second stage of development, occurring in late infancy and toddlerhood (1-3 years). After gaining trust in their caregivers, infants begin to discover that their behavior is their own. They start to assert their sense of independence, or autonomy. They realize their will. If infants are restrained too much or punished too harshly, they are likely to develop a sense of shame and doubt.

Initiative versus guilt is Erikson’s third stage of development, occurring during the preschool years. As preschool children encounter a widening social world, they are challenged more than when they were infants. Active, purposeful behavior is needed to cope with these challenges. Children are asked to assume responsibility for their bodies, their behavior, their toys, and their pets. Developing a sense of responsibility increases initiative. Uncomfortable guilt feelings may arise, though, if the child is irresponsible and is made to feel too anxious. Erikson has a positive outlook on this stage. He believes that most guilt is quickly compensated for by a sense of accomplishment.

Intimacy versus isolation is Erikson’s sixth developmental stage, which individuals experience during the early adulthood years. At this time, individuals face the developmental task of forming intimate relationships with others. Erikson describes intimacy as finding oneself yet losing oneself in another. If the young adult forms healthy friendships and an intimate relationship with another individual, intimacy will be achieved; if not, isolation will result.

Generativity versus stagnation is Erikson’s seventh developmental stage, which individuals experience during middle adulthood. A chief concern is to assist the younger generation in developing and leading useful lives- this is what Erikson means by generativity. The feeling of having done nothing to help the next generation is stagnation.

Integrity versus despair is Erikson’s eighth and final developmental stage, which individuals experience during late adulthood. In the later year of life, we look back and evaluate what we have done with our lives. Through many different routes, the older person may have developed a positive outlook in most of all of the previous stages of development. If so, the retrospective glances will reveal a picture of a life well spent, and the person will feel a sense of satisfaction-integrity will be achieved. If the older adult resolved many of the earlier stages negatively, the retrospective glances likely will yield doubt or gloom- the despair Erikson talks about.

Erikson does not believe that the proper solution to a stage crisis is always completely positive. Some exposure or commitment to the negative end of the person’s bipolar conflict is sometimes inevitable- you cannot trust all people under all circumstances and survive, for example. Nonetheless, in the healthy solution to a stage crisis, the positive resolution dominates.

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