Erikson's Psychosocial Development and Object Relations Theory Notes

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages and Developmental Processes

Table 2.2: Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

  • Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
    • Approximate Age: Birth – 18 months
    • Description: Focus on oral-sensory activity; development of trusting relationships with caregivers and self-trust (hope) and confidence.
    • Mistrust: Occurs when infants are handled harshly and have to wait too long for comfort and basic needs to be met.
  • Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
    • Approximate Age: 1–2 years
    • Description: Focus on muscular-anal activity; development of control over bodily functions and activities (will).
    • Autonomy: Fostered by permitting reasonable free choice.
    • Shame and Doubt: Occurs when parents are too forceful or shaming, leading to self-doubt and questioning of abilities.
  • Initiative vs. Guilt
    • Approximate Age: 3–6 years
    • Description: Focus on locomotor-genital activity; testing limits of self-assertion and purposefulness (purpose).
    • Initiative: Developing a sense of responsibility and purpose through exploration and experimentation.
    • Guilt: Can arise from excessive parental control, leading to feelings of guilt for displaying initiative.
  • Industry vs. Inferiority
    • Approximate Age: 7–11 years (latency period)
    • Description: Focus on mastery, competence, and productivity (competence).
    • Industry: Developing the capacity to cooperate and work with others, becoming industrious in cognitive, physical, and emotional ways.
    • Inferiority: Can arise from negative experiences at school and home with siblings and peers.
  • Identity vs. Role Confusion
    • Approximate Age: Teenage years (adolescence)
    • Description: Focus on formation of identity and coherent self-concept (fidelity).
    • Identity: Formed through searching for meaning, exploring vocational goals, and self-values.
    • Role Confusion: Confusion about identity, roles, responsibilities, and adult values.
  • Intimacy vs. Isolation
    • Approximate Age: 20s and 30s (early adulthood)
    • Description: Focus on achievement of an intimate relationship (love) and career direction.
    • Isolation: Difficulty forming close relationships due to earlier disappointments.
  • Generativity vs. Stagnation
    • Approximate Age: 40s to 60s (middle adulthood)
    • Description: Focus on fulfilment through creative, productive activity that contributes to future generations (care).
    • Stagnation: Failure to achieve meaningful accomplishment.
  • Ego Integrity vs. Despair
    • Approximate Age: 60s on (old age)
    • Description: Focus on belief in integrity of life, including successes and failures (wisdom).
    • Ego Integrity: Reflecting on life and accomplishments with satisfaction.
    • Despair: Dissatisfaction with life, leading to a fear of death.

Developmental Processes

  • Ego Development: Occurs through stages, each building on preceding stages.
  • Psychosocial Crisis: Each stage focuses on resolving a crisis between two opposing ego qualities.
  • Resolution: No stage is fully resolved; favourable resolution at earlier stages facilitates later stages.

Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

  • Age: Preschool years
  • Initiative: Combines autonomy with exploring new activities, ideas, and pursuing tasks.
  • Guilt: Self-criticism due to failure to meet parental expectations.
  • Crisis: Often involves children taking on more than they can handle, including powerful feelings.
  • Virtue: Purpose develops when children are treated respectfully and helped to pursue goals without guilt.

Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority

  • Context: Leaving family and entering school.
  • Industry: Developing capacity to work and cooperate with others.
  • Belief: Belief in ability to learn basic skills required to be a productive member of society.
  • Virtue: Competence results from successfully starting and completing tasks.
  • Inferiority: Failure to feel competent can lead to alienation or thoughtless conformity.

Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion

  • Timing: Coincides with physical and psychosocial changes of adolescence.
  • Identity: Integrated sense of who one is based on different roles played.
  • Role Confusion: Failure to achieve integration of roles.
  • Re-evaluation: Teenagers re-evaluate themselves in physical, sexual, intellectual, religious, and career areas.
  • Conflicts: Conflicts from earlier stages may resurface.
  • Virtue: Fidelity, the ability to sustain loyalties despite conflicts and inconsistencies.
  • Negative Outcomes: Premature choice of identity, prolonged confusion, or adoption of a negative identity.

Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

  • Focus: Young adults developing close, committed relationships.
  • Virtue: Love, resulting from successful resolution.
  • Challenge: Coping with the fear of losing identity in intimate relationships.
  • Isolation: Difficulty forming relationships due to earlier disappointments.

Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation

  • Timing: Middle adulthood
  • Virtue: Care, or concern for others.
  • Generativity: Feeling that one’s work and family life are personally satisfying and socially meaningful, contributing to future generations.
  • Stagnation: Life no longer seems purposeful.

Stage 8: Ego Integrity vs. Despair

  • Timing: Late adulthood
  • Virtue: Wisdom.
  • Ego Integrity: Ability to look back on life with dignity, optimism, and wisdom.
  • Despair: Results from health problems, economic difficulties, social isolation, and lack of meaningful work.

General Principles of Erikson's Theory

  • Conflicts: Never fully resolved; individuals achieve a more or less favourable ratio.
  • Epigenetic Principle: Underpins the stages of psychosocial development.
  • Ground Plan: Development occurs through a predetermined unfolding of personality in eight stages.
  • Analogy: Like the unfolding of a rose bud, each part arises at a certain time and order (Erikson, 1968).
  • Interference: Interfering with the natural order can ruin the entire development.

What Do You Think?

  • Epigenetic Influence: Each stage is determined by success or lack of success in previous stages.
  • Cultural, Social, and Gender Issues: Influence how individuals deal with each crisis.

Other Psychodynamic Approaches: Object Relations Theory

  • Object Relations: Child's relationships with important people (objects) in their environment.
  • Process: Objects' qualities become part of the child's personality and mental life.

Mahler's Phases of Development

  • Focus: How personality development is influenced by mental representations based on experiences and attachment relationships.
  • Autistic Phase
    • Approximate Age: Birth – 2 months
    • Description: Self-absorbed, little psychological awareness of the world.
  • Symbiotic Phase
    • Approximate Age: 2–6 months
    • Description: Infant experiences themselves as completely connected with and dependent on primary caregiver.
  • Separation-Individuation Phase
    • Approximate Age: 6–24 months
    • Description: Infants develop a separate sense of self.
      • Hatching Subphase (6–10 months): Responds differently to primary caregivers versus others.
      • Practising Subphase (10–16 months): Safe separation and disengagement begin.
      • Rapprochement Subphase (16–24 months): Explores world safely by leaving and returning to caregiver.
  • Object Constancy Phase
    • Approximate Age: 24–36 months and over
    • Description: Maintains stable and reliable mental images of the primary caregivers.

Stern's Description of the Development of Psychological Self

  • Basis: Detailed empirical studies of infant-parent interactions.
  • Emergent Self: From birth, infants organize experiences, regulate sleeping and eating, and participate in their interpersonal world.
  • Core Self: Awareness of being physically separate from others (2–6 months).
  • Subjective Self: Organized mental representation of relationships with others (6–12 months).
  • Verbal Self: Development of language and symbolic thought (12–18 months).