CH6: Erik Erikson's Post Freudian Theory

• Extended Freud’s infantile development stages into

  adolescence, adulthood, and old age
• Suggested that at each stage a specific psychosocial struggle

  contributes to the formation of personality
• From adolescence on, that struggle takes the form of an

  identity crisis – a turning point in one’s life that may either

  strengthen or weaken personality.
• Life-cycle approach to personality and placed more emphasis on both social and historical influences.
• A positive force that creates self-identity, a sense of “I”. The center of personality that helps us to adapt to the various conflicts and crises of life and keeps us from losing our individuality to the leveling forces of society.
• The ego has three interrelated aspects:

  1. Body ego: Describes our experiences with our bodies; a way of seeing our physical selves as different from others.
• 2. Ego Ideal: Represents the image we have of ourselves in comparison with an established ideal.
• 3. Ego identity: Image we have of ourselves in a variety of social roles we play.
• Erikson’s emphasis on social and historical factors was in contrast with Freud’s biological factors.
• To Erikson, the ego exists as potential at birth, but it must emerge from within a cultural environment. Different societies, with their variations in child-rearing practices, tend to shape personalities that fit the needs and values of their culture.
• pseudospecies: that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated by a particular society that it is somehow chosen to be the human species.
• Erikson believed that the ego develops throughout the various stages of life according to an epigenetic principle, a term borrowed from embryology.
• 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.
• First, growth takes place according to the epigenetic principle. Own time of ascendancy, does not replace.

  Second, in every stage of life there is an interaction of opposites— that is, a conflict between a syntonic (trust, harmonious) element and a dystonic (mistrust, disruptive) element
• Third, 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.
• Fourth, too little basic strength at any one stage results in a core pathology for that stage.
• Fifth, although Erikson referred to his eight stages as psychosocial stages, he never lost sight of the biological aspect of human development.
• Sixth, 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.
• Seventh, during each stage, but especially from adolescence forward, personality development is characterized by an identity crisis, which Erikson
• Erikson (1974) defined psychohistory as “the study of individual and collective life with the combined methods of psychoanalysis and history”. He used psychohistory to demonstrate his fundamental beliefs that each person is a product of his or her historical time and that those historical times are influenced by exceptional leaders experiencing a personal identity conflict.