Erikson's Theory Of Psychosocial Development

Psychosocial development is development on a social realm. Psychosocial development is how one develops their mind, maturity level, and emotions over the course of one’s life. The rate of development depends on different factors such as biological processes as well as environmental factors. A man named Erik Erikson who was a psychoanalyst who believed that early childhood successes and failures were responsible for influencing later developmental stages developed this theory. Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is based around the theory that social experience has an impact over an entire lifespan. There are eight stages developmental stages of development in the psychosocial theory and I will briefly examine all eight stages in this

His belief was that each human developed their own personality through a series of stages and these stages developed due to the social experiences that one experienced through life. According to Erikson, there are eight stages and each stage centers around a conflict that has to be resolved. Under Erikson’s theory, if conflict or crisis is not resolved, then the outcome will be more crisis and struggles with that issue later on in life (Domino & Affonso, 2011).
The first stage in Erikson’s psychosocial theory is the Trust vs. Mistrust stage. This stage is from birth to about one year of age. This is the time when an infant child learns to depend on another for affection, comfort, and nutrition eventually learning to blindly trust the primary caregivers to provide these things (Cooper, 1998). When the infants needs are met, then the infant develops a specific attachment with their caregiver, if the outcome is negative then the infant learns to mistrust the people around them and the environment that they are in. This brings us to the next stage in psychosocial

isolation stage is between the ages of 19 to 40 and is very important to the relationships one will hold during these years. Erikson believed that it did not matter how successful one was financially, they are not truly complete developmentally until one is capable of true intimacy. People that have not successfully created a sense of identity will have a fear of commitment however, someone that has successfully developed a sense of self is able to form bonds and create successful relationships as an adult (Davis & Clifton, 95).
Middle adulthood is the generatively vs. stagnation stages in which an adult must care of others and realize that they need a family or a legacy. During this stage, people will nurture their own family or find ways to nurture others that need to be nurtured outside their immediate family. If an adult does not overcome the crisis during this stage, then they will not grow which will result in them being selfish and