Erikson - Psychosocial Development

• What is the first psychosocial stage of Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development? It parallels Freud’s oral phase of development.


  Infancy
• Infancy is the most fundamental stage in life. Because an infant is utterly dependent, developing trust is based on the dependability and quality of the child's caregivers.
• What is the conflict or the psychosocial crisis of infancy?

  Basic trust vs basic mistrust
• If they realize that their mother will provide food regularly or provide nurture care, they begin to learn basic ___.

  Trust
• If they find no correspondence between their oral-sensory needs and their environment, infants learn basic ___.

  Mistrust
• Too much trust makes them gullible and vulnerable to the vagaries of the world.
• Too little trust leads to frustration, anger, hostility, cynicism, or depression.
• What basic strength will infants acquire if they successfully solve the psychosocial crisis?

  Hope
• If infants do not develop sufficient hope during infancy, they will develop the anithesis or opposite of hope. It is also known as the core pathology of Infancy.

  Withdrawal
• What is the second psychosocial stage of Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development? It is a period paralleling Freud’s anal stage (2-3 years old).

  Early Childhood
• Early childhood is the stage in which a child learns to be independent and make their own decisions in life.
• What is the conflict that will become the major psychosocial crisis of early childhood?

  Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt
• It is a feeling of self consciousness, of being looked at and exposed.


  Shame
• It is the feeling of not being certain, the feeling that something remains hidden and cannot be seen.


  Doubt
• Both shame and doubt are dystonic qualities, and both grow out of the basic mistrust that was established in infancy.
• What is the basic strength that will evolve from solving the crisis of autonomy vs shame and doubt?

  Will
• What is the term called for inadequate will? It is also known as the core pathology of Early Childhood.

  Compulsion
• 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.
• It is the third psychosocial stage of Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development, a period covering the same time as Freud’s phallic phase (3-5 years old).

  Play Age
• During the play age stage, children begin to assert their power and control over the world through directing play and other social interactions.
• What is the dominant psychosocial crisis of the play age?

  Initiative vs Guilt
• The ratio of initiative and guilt should favor the syntonic quality or the initiative.
• Uncontrolled initiative may lead to chaos and lack of moral principles. On the other hand, if guilt is the dominant element, children may become compulsively moralistic or overly inhibited.
• The conflict of initiative versus guilt produces the basic strength of purpose.
• If children were able to seek purpose,  their genital interests will now have a direction, with mother or father being the object of their sexual desires. They set goals and pursue them with purpose.
• It is a feeling of embarrassment or worry that prevents you from saying or doing what you want. It is the antipathy of purpose and the core pathology of play age.

  Inhibition
• It is the fourth psychosocial stage of Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development, it covers development from about age 6 to approximately age 12 or 13 and matches the latency years of Freud’s theory.

  School Age
• School age is a time for tremendous social growth. For school-age children, their wish to know becomes strong and is tied to their basic striving for competence.
• What is the psychosocial crisis of the school age?

  Industry vs Inferiority
• School-age children learn to work and play at activities directed toward acquiring job skills and toward learning the rules of cooperation. As children learn to do things well, they develop a sense of industry, but if their work is insufficient to accomplish their goals, they acquire a sense of inferiority.
• From the conflict of industry versus inferiority, school-age children develop the basic strength of ___. It is the confidence to use one’s physical and cognitive abilities to solve the problems that accompany school age.

  Competence
• 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. They may become preoccupied with infantile genital and Oedipal fantasies and spend most of their time in nonproductive play. This regression is called __, the antithesis of competence and the core pathology of the school age.

  Inertia
• It is the period from puberty to young adulthood, which 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.

  Adolescence
• What is the psychosocial crisis of adolescence?

  Identity vs Identity Confusion
• Ego identity is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction and becomes a central focus during the identity versus confusion stage of psychosocial development.
• What emerges from the crisis of identity vs identity confusion? It is also known as the basic strength of adolescence.

  Fidelity
• The pathological counterpart of fidelity is __, the core pathology of adolescence that blocks one’s ability to synthesize various self-images and values into a workable identity.

  Role Repudiation
• What is the sixth stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development? It takes place between ages 18 and 40.

  Young Adulthood
• What is the conflict or psychosocial crisis of Young Adulthood?

  Intimacy vs Isolation
• It is the ability to fuse one’s identity with that of another person without fear of losing it.

  Intimacy