Erik Erickson Research Paper

Erik Erikson was a developmental psychologist that had a strong Freudian background. Erik Erikson was widely known for his primary focus on the social interaction between humans. This resulted in Erikson developing eight psychosocial stages that he believes that every person will go through in their lifetime. Each different stage occurs at different times in life and will either result in success or failure. The stages range from infancy all the way through to late adulthood. The successful completion of a stage and its challenges will result in a new stage and its new challenges. As a person goes through these stage in life, Erikson believes that the different stages are responsible for shaping key elements of personality. Erikson believes that this kind of development occurs through changes in interactions with and understandings of others in self-knowledge and understanding of members of …show more content…
The principles of this development theory are, psychosocial development involves eight distinct, fixed, and universal stages, and the other principle of psychosocial development is related to the fact that each one of the eight stages presents crisis/conflict that needs to be resolved and this results in growth and change that is lifelong. The eight different stages are, trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and ego-integrity versus despair. The result of success or failure at each of these eight stages is what will help develop key aspects of personality. Erikson believes that we may revisit stages that may have resulted in failure and achieve success hopefully experience mastery in that