Examining Erik Erikson's Development Theory through 'Matilda'

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Recommended: State the strengths, weakness and educational implications of Erikson's theory of psychological development

I have picked Little Bitty Pretty from the first episode of the film Matilda (1996) to analyze for this assignment. Erik Erikson – Industry (competence) vs. Inferiority Erikson's psychological development theory comprises eight unique stages and takes in five stages up to the 18 years of age and the other three other stages into maturity. Erikson points out that there is yet an ample room for continued growth and development all through a person's life. Fundamentally, Erikson emphasizes on the pubertal period, feeling it is an important stage for the development of an individual's identity. Like Freud, Erikson believes that there are crises at every developmental stage, which are of psychosocial nature as they encompass psychological needs of the person – that is psycho – …show more content…

He differed with the assumption that intelligence was a fixed attribute and considered cognitive development as a process that happens as a result of biological maturation along with interacting with the surrounding. The preoperational stage starts about age two and ends at around age seven. The development of the child comprises creating experiences about the society by adaptation. The child's communications and thoughts are generally egocentric (Mischel, 2013). Egocentrism is the inability of the child to see a situation from another individual's perspective. For instance, Little Bitty Pretty is not able to see what is making her parents yell to each other and why her drunken parents are shouting to one another, and rather tells her father to yell at her. Besides, at this stage, children engage in symbolic play and pretend to be persons they are not such as superheroes and could play such roles with props which represent real life objects. For the case of Little Bitty Pretty, she pretends to play with different objects in the house, which she can command to act as if they were

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