Erickson's Theory In The Mean Girls

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People always wonder who they are and how they came to be that person. Erickson, a Freudian ego-psychologist, tackles this issue as in his quest, he discovers how personality develops in a series of stages. Additionally, Erickson also discovers growing up, especially for other cultures like Asian-American or African American is toilsome. Not to mention, Cady on the movie, “The Mean Girls” also grew up in a foreign country. As a matter of fact Cady got wrapped up in different stages of Erickson’s theory when she first arrived in a foreign high school. The three stages of Erickson’s theory Cady undergoes are trust vs mistrust, ego-identity vs role-confusion and initiative vs guilt. The first stage of Erickson’s theory is trust vs mistrust in which a child begs the question, can I trust people around me and will someone comfort me. In this stage the child shapes his personality through trusting people. Likewise, Cady in the beginning of the movie faced identical challenges as she did not know who to trust, considering this was her first day of high school. Nevertheless Cady soon becomes friends with Janis and Damien. Eventually Cady also turns out to be Regina’s friend as one of the four plastic girls when Regina rescue’s Cady as she was scammed by Jason. Consequently, Cady successfully …show more content…

Cady in this phase explores her independence, although she struggles developing sense of self identity and role in society. Cady turns to fanaticism when she first sees her crush, Aron Samuels, canoodling with Regina in the Halloween party. For this reason Cady agrees with Janis to mess around with Regina for revenge. Cady then begins to break Regina’s relationship, eventually becoming the next mean girl, hence turning into the new Regina. Due to Cady’s repudiation, she loses her personality, admittedly falling in Erickson’s theory of ego-identity vs

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