Erik Erikson’s Ego Theory vs. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

Throughout time, many psychologists have had their own views about different theories. Theories direct and guide our perception of thinking. The similarities and differences can be broken down through different forms of development by Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura. Sigmund Freud emphasized the influence of the id, believing that the ego acts only out of borrowed energy and acts best as a commander. Sigmund Freud perceived aggression as a universal human behavior. According to Freud, we, humans are unaware of its presence because we are suppressed by the superego. In Erikson’s theory, he explains how the ego is the part of the mind that gives coherence to experiences, conscious or unconscious. Erikson agreed with Freud that the ego is responsible for human behavior and aggression. On the other hand, social learning theorist Albert Bandura suggests that behavior is learned through observation either accidentally or on purpose. This paper examines how Erikson’s psychoanalytic theory of the Ego compares and contrast to Bandura’s social learning theory.

Erik H. Erikson was born on June 15th, 1902, near Frankfurt, Germany. He never knew his mother’s first husband or his birth father (Engler, 153). His mother then married a pediatrician, who adopted Erik and gave him his last name. His parents concealed the fact of his adoption from him for many years, in which Erikson later called, “a loving deceit.” Ironically, the man who was famous for the term “identity crisis” was experiencing himself a significant identity crisis during his childhood. Erikson struggled with both the quest for his psychological identity and that of his biological identity. The fact that Erikson was raised in a Jewish home, but his genetic backg...

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...n educator, Erikson was interested in how one might strengthen and enrich the ego of young children. On the other hand, looking at Bandura’s perspective of the social learning theory of observational learning, he believed that human behavior is due to a mixture of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors that surrounds a person. Many psychologists agree with Bandura that behavior arises from the interactions of a person and the environment rather than from either factor alone (Engler, 235). This paper concludes that both theories of social motivation, ego, and learning play an important role in the development of infants and that modeling and aggression are linked together. Erik Erikson’s theory focused on the social dimensions of Freud’s ego theory, while Albert Bandura’s theory focused on models that influence learning through their informative function.