Erikson's Theory

Overview of Erikson's Theory

Erik Erikson was a pioneer in emphasizing the role of social context in human development. His theory is particularly useful because it allows us to address in one analysis the psychological, biological, cultural, and historical factors that influence epigenetic development. Early in his career, Erikson undertook detailed analyses of childhood and adolescence in North American Native cultures (1963) when developing his “ego psychology.” These studies in cultural anthropology, along with his experiences treating war casualties and disturbed children, led him to subsequently study the unique cultural contexts experienced by American young people in the 1950s and 1960s (1963, 1968).

Strongly influenced by both Sigmund and Anna Freud, Erikson modified the psychodynamic model to show how cultural contexts can affect ego development over the entire life span, not just during the first few years of life. With his well-known eight-stage theory of epigenetic development, he argued that human development is inherently psychosocial because in addition to being influenced by biological [Page 407]development, each stage of ego development involves the gradual meshing of the individual's maturing psychological (ego) characteristics with the increasingly complex social contexts encountered during the life course. Psychosocial tasks involve solving problems associated with functioning in social and cultural contexts while at the same time overcoming difficulties in managing psychological conflicts. Completing these psychosocial tasks constitutes positive resolutions of a stage when the person acquires the ego-syntonic quality of that stage (e.g., trust or autonomy). Incompletely mastered tasks leave ego-dystonic qualities (e.g., mistrust, sense of inferiority) that can interfere with later situations requiring positive ego capacities (e.g., the person does not have a sufficient sense of trust or autonomy in relation to the contexts encountered in later life).

The years of infancy and childhood include four psychosocial stages, during which specific ego strengths are ideally acquired in ways that lay foundations for subsequent positive development. During the first stage, a sufficient sense of trust is needed to outweigh residual feelings of mistrust, producing the basic ego strength of “hope,” upon which subsequent ego strengths are established. In the second stage, positive development requires a sense of autonomy to outbalance the senses of shame and doubt for the ego strength of “will” that is necessary to venture out into the world. At the third stage, the sense of initiative needs to outweigh a sense of guilt for the ego strength of “purpose” necessary for individuation. And, by the end of the fourth stage, a sufficient sense of industry in successfully completing work tasks is needed to overcome a nascent sense of inferiority that would come from failure experiences, providing the ego strength of “competence” for eventually taking up productive roles in society.

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