The term "epigenesis" was taken by E. Erickson from biology. According to the epigenetic principle, everything that grows and develops has a general plan, on the basis of which separate parts develop, each of which has the most favorable period for preferential development. This happens until all the parts, having developed, form a functional whole.
According to E. Erickson, the sequence of stages is the result of biological maturation, but the content of development at each stage is determined by what the society to which he belongs expects from a person. Any person goes through all these stages, no matter what culture he belongs to, it all depends on the duration of his life.
E. Erickson accepted the ideas of 3. Freud about the three-membered structure of personality, identifying Id with desires and dreams, and Super-Ego with feelings of duty, between which a person constantly fluctuates in thoughts and feelings. Between them there is a "dead point" - Ego, in which, according to E. Erickson, we are most of all ourselves, although we are least aware of ourselves.
Infant age. Stage one: foundational faith and hope vs. foundational hopelessness. The peculiarity of modes is that another object or person is necessary for their functioning. In the first days of life, the child “lives and loves through the mouth”, and the mother “lives and loves through the breast”. In the act of feeding, the child receives the first experience of reciprocity: his ability to "receive through the mouth" meets with a response from the mother.
Early childhood. Second stage: autonomy versus shame and doubt. It begins from the moment when the child begins to walk. At this stage, the pleasure zone is associated with the anus. The anal zone creates two opposite modes - the mode of retention and the mode of relaxation (letting go). Society, attaching special importance to accustoming a child to neatness, creates conditions for the dominance of these modes, their separation from their body and transformation into such modalities of behavior as "preservation" and "destruction". The struggle for "sphincter control" as a result of the importance given to it by society is transformed into a struggle for mastery of one's motor capabilities, for the establishment of a new, autonomous self.
Preschool age. Third stage: initiative versus guilt. Being firmly convinced that he is his own person, the child must now find out what kind of person he can become.
School age. Fourth stage: industriousness versus inferiority. The fourth stage of personality development is characterized by a certain drowsiness of infantile sexuality and a delay in genital maturity, which is necessary for the future adult to learn the technical and social foundations of labor activity.
Adolescence and youth. Fifth stage: personal identity versus role confusion (identity confusion). The fifth stage is characterized by the deepest life crisis. Three lines of development lead to it: 1) rapid physical growth and puberty ("physiological revolution"); 2) concern about how a teenager looks in the eyes of others, what he is; 3) the need to find one's professional vocation that meets the acquired skills, individual abilities and the requirements of society. In the adolescent identity crisis, all past critical moments of development reappear. The teenager must now solve all the old problems consciously and with an inner conviction that it is this choice that is significant for him and for society. Then social trust in the world, independence, initiative, mastered skills will create a new integrity of the individual.
Youth. Sixth stage: intimacy versus loneliness. Overcoming the crisis and the formation of ego-identity allows young people to move on to the sixth stage, the content of which is the search for a life partner, the desire for close friendships with members of their social group. Now the young man is not afraid of the loss of the Self and depersonalization, he is able to "with readiness and desire to mix his identity with others."
Maturity. Seventh stage: productivity (generativity) vs. stagnation. This stage can be called the central stage in the adult stage. life path person. Personal development continues due to the influence of children, the younger generation, which confirms the subjective feeling of being needed by others. Productivity (generativity) and generation (procreation), as the main positive characteristics personalities at this stage are realized in caring for the upbringing of a new generation, in productive labor activity and in creativity. In everything that a person does, he puts a particle of his I, and this leads to personal enrichment. A mature person needs to be needed.
Old age. Eighth stage: integrity of the personality against despair. Having found life experience, enriched by concern for the people around him, and primarily about children, creative ups and downs, a person can gain integrativity - the conquest of all seven previous stages of development. E. Erickson highlights several of its characteristics: 1) an ever-increasing personal confidence in their tendency to order and meaningfulness; 2) post-narcissistic love of a human person (and not an individual) as an experience expressing some kind of world order and spiritual meaning, no matter what price they get; 3) acceptance of one's only life path as the only proper and not in need of replacement; 4) new, different from the former, love for their parents; 5) a comradely, participatory, connected attitude to the principles of remote times and various activities in the form in which they were expressed in the words and results of these activities.
epigenetic theory Erickson's personality development
Erickson's epigenetic theory of personality development
E. Erikson's epigenetic theory of development Erik Erikson (1902-1994) - an outstanding ego psychologist, was a follower of Z. Freud, although he moved away from classical psychoanalysis on some issues.
The central position of his theory of development was that a person during
life passes through several stages universal for all mankind. The process of deployment of these stages is regulated in accordance with the epigenetic principle of maturation: 1. the personality develops in steps, the transition from one stage to another is predetermined by the readiness of the personality to move in the direction of further growth, expanding the conscious social outlook and radius social interaction; 2. society, in principle, is arranged in such a way that the development of human social capabilities is accepted approvingly, society tries to contribute to the preservation of this trend, as well as to support both
Proper pace and correct sequence development (Ziegler and Kjell). Erickson divided human life into eight distinct stages
psychosocial development of the ego. These stages are the result
The epigenetically unfolding "personality plan" that
inherited genetically. The epigenetic concept of development is based on the fact that each stage of the life cycle occurs at a certain time for it (critical period), and also on the fact that
That a fully functioning personality is formed only by going through all the stages in its development. Each stage is accompanied by a crisis - a turning point
in the life of an individual, which arises as a result of reaching a certain level of psychological maturity and social requirements for the individual at this stage. Every crisis contains both positive and negative components.
Depending on how satisfactorily it is resolved. The central concept of Erickson's epigenetic theory of development is the ego modus - the predominant way the human "I" manifests itself in one way or another. life situation(personal plan).
Periods of psychosocial development according to Erickson: 1) oral stage (0-1 year) - infancy.
The ego mode is the mode of absorption (absorption) into oneself. At first
the child psychologically looks and impresses everything that he sees around him, but this is still a passive absorption. Then - active absorption (grabs different objects, examines them).
The main task is the formation and development of a sense of trust (distrust) in the world around. The interaction between mother and child is important, i.e. feeling
basic trust, which consists in the fact that the child trusts the world around him in the person of an adult (if it gets bad, then someone will come to the rescue). If there is no proper care, a basic distrust of the world is formed.
2) anal stage (1-3 years) - early age.
The ego modus is being transformed; for a growing organism, the possibilities of regulating retention (pushing out) become important; excretory processes (potty training). But it's happening
Not only physiologically, but also psychological level
– “can I be autonomous, self-manage. Either autonomy is formed, or a sense of shame and doubt (associated with the mechanism of publicity).
The child is already sufficiently autonomous in the sense of active
movement. Often people from the immediate environment
Can shame the child for uncleanliness, is formed
self-image as incapable of coping with
By yourself, i.e. as about a person acting shameful
Thus, the feeling of shame takes root. 3) phallic stage (3-6 years) - the age of the game.
The mode of the ego is intrusion (penetration somewhere).
There is an interest in one's gender and sexual differences. It is important that this is the age of the game.
The child develops either initiative, realizes himself, or the initiative is suppressed, narrow
limitations and feelings of guilt. Guilt is understanding oneself as the cause of wrong actions,
Evil, someone's loss (assessment of oneself as guilty). At this age, the superego is actively formed, because. appears
a huge number of restrictions.
4) latent stage (6-12 years) - industrial stage. At this stage, diligence, skill, mastery of work, creativity are manifested. The child's ability to
logical thinking and self-discipline, as well as the ability to interact with peers in accordance with the rules. Ego Identity - "I am what I have learned."
The opposite pole is incompetence, failure,
failure to.
5) adolescence (12-19 (20) years).
The main task is the formation of identity as a feeling
Continuous self-identity. A person spends the first 20 years of his life on entering the society in which he lives, mastering knowledge, accepting culture, becoming a full-fledged member of society, i.e. a harmonious “I-concept” (ego-identity) should be formed. In addition to the interest of adolescents in inter-gender relationships
(like Freud), for Erickson at this stage of development
More important is building a harmonious hierarchy
their roles (son, student, member of the company). If personality
Able to flexibly move from one role to another, then a harmonious identity is formed. Adolescents' inability to achieve personal identity leads to what Erickson called an identity crisis.
(role mixing). It is characterized by the inability to choose a career or continue education, otherwise a diffuse identity is formed. Problems: a) you have to accept yourself as a man or a woman; b) it is necessary to form a time perspective (planning for the future); c) accepting one's role in the group (leader-follower); d) formation of attitude (hetero-, homo-, bisexuality); e) ideological attitudes.
If adolescents do not cope with these tasks, then a
diffuse identity. However, at the end of adolescence
There is a moratorium (extended ripening of self-identity). 6) Youth (20 - 35 years) - early maturity. The main task is to achieve intimacy with other people.
At this stage, there is a search for close relationships, the creation
Families. Intimacy requires trust. If in
in the past there were failures, unresolved problems (guilt, shame, incompetence) and if the formed identity is diffuse, then the search for intimacy may be unsuccessful. If a person has not formed himself, then it will not be possible to create a full-fledged family because of the inability to bear responsibility, trust, etc. Thus, at one pole, “intimacy” is formed as a feeling that we experience for spouses, friends, parents, etc. (the ability to merge
Your identity with the identity of another person without fear that something in yourself will be lost). At the opposite pole is formed
isolation, excessive self-absorption, avoidance of interpersonal relationships.
7) maturity (35 years - end of employment). The main task is the choice between productivity and inertia.
This implies generativity, creativity, influencing the next generation. The opposite pole is stagnation, i.e. a person can do little, there is no creativity, no care. For now
The period accounts for the "mid-life crisis", which is expressed
in a sense of hopelessness, the meaninglessness of life.
8) old age (from 60 and older) - late adulthood. The identity period is coming to an end. In this period
the personality integrates the events of the previous life (achievement of wisdom). There is an acceptance of one's life with all the successes and failures, and the result of life is assessed as positive,
Those. ego integration takes place. If the individual cannot
positively comprehend your life path, then there is despair, disappointment, a feeling of bitterness and regret, which entails depression, hypochondria, anger.
stage age psychosocial crisis forte oral 0-1 years Basic trust - distrust Hope anal 1-3 years Autonomy - shame and doubt willpower phallic 3-6 years Initiative - guilt goal latent 6-12 years Diligence - incompetence competence adolescent 12-19 (20) Harmonious identity - diffuse identity fidelity youth 20-35 years closeness - isolation love maturity 35-60 years productivity - stagnation care old age 60 and older ego-integration - despair wisdom
Eric Erikson, a student of Freud, based on Freud's theory of the phases of psychosexual development, created a new theory - psychosocial development. It includes eight stages of development of the "I", at each of which the guidelines in relation to oneself and to external environment(Erickson, 1996). Erickson noted that the study of personal individuality is becoming the same strategic task in the second half of the 20th century, which was the study of sexuality in Freud's time, at the end of the 19th century. First of all, Erickson's theory differs from Freud's theory in the following ways:
8 stages according to Erickson are not limited only to childhood, but include the development and transformation of personality throughout life from birth to old age. Adult and mature age are characterized by their own crises, during which the tasks corresponding to them are solved.
Unlike Freud's pansexual theory, human development, according to Erickson, consists of three autonomous, albeit interconnected, processes: somatic development, studied by biology; development of the conscious self, studied by psychology; and social development, studied by the social sciences.
The basic law of development, according to Erickson, is the "epigenetic principle", according to which at each new stage of development, new phenomena and properties arise that were not at the previous stages of the process.
Stages of development of the psyche according to Erickson:
1. Oral-sensory. Corresponds to the oral stage of classical psychoanalysis. Age: first year of life. Stage objective: basic trust versus basic mistrust. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: energy and hope.
The extent of the infant's confidence in the world depends on the care shown to him. Normal development occurs when his needs are quickly met, he does not experience long illness, he is cradled and caressed, played with and talked to. The mother's behavior is confident and predictable. In this case, trust is developed in the world into which he has come. If he does not receive proper care, distrust, timidity and suspicion are developed.
2. Musculo-anal. Coincides with the anal stage of Freudianism. Age - the second or third years of life. Stage objective: autonomy versus shame and doubt. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: self-control and willpower.
At this stage, the development of independence based on motor and mental abilities comes to the fore. The child masters various movements. If the parents leave the child to do what he can, he develops the feeling that he owns his muscles, his impulses, himself, and, to a large extent, the environment. Independence appears.
The outcome of this stage depends on the ratio of cooperation and self-will, freedom of expression and its suppression. From a sense of self-control, as the freedom to dispose of oneself without loss of self-respect, a strong sense of goodwill, readiness for action and pride in one's achievements, a sense of one's own dignity, originates. From the feeling of loss of freedom to dispose of oneself and the feeling of someone else's overcontrol comes a steady tendency to doubt and shame.
3. Locomotor-genital. The stage of infantile genitality corresponds to the phallic stage of psychoanalysis. Age - preschool, 4-5 years. The task of the stage: initiative (enterprise) against feelings of guilt. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: direction and purposefulness.
By the beginning of this stage, the child has already acquired many physical skills, begins to invent activities for himself, and not just respond to actions and imitate them. Shows ingenuity in speech, the ability to fantasize.
The preponderance of qualities in character largely depends on how adults react to the child's undertakings. Children who are given the initiative in choosing an activity (running, wrestling, messing around, riding a bicycle, sledding, skating) develop entrepreneurial spirit. It reinforces her parents' willingness to answer questions (intellectual enterprise) and not interfere with fantasizing and starting games.
At this stage, the most important separation occurs between the potential triumph of man and the potential total destruction. It is here that the child becomes forever divided within himself: into a childish set, which retains an abundance of growth potentials, and a parental set, which maintains and enhances self-control, self-government, and self-punishment. A sense of moral responsibility develops.
4. Latent. Corresponds to the latent phase of classical psychoanalysis. Age - 6-11 years. The task of the stage: diligence (skill) against feelings of inferiority. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: systematic and competent.
Love and jealousy are at this stage in a latent state, which is what its name says - latent. These are the years elementary school. The child shows the ability to deduce, organized games, regulated activities. Interest in how things are arranged, how to adapt them, master them. During these years, he resembles Robinson Crusoe and is often interested in his life.
When children are encouraged to make crafts, build huts and aircraft models, cook, cook and needlework, when they are allowed to complete the work they have begun, they are praised for the results, then the child develops skill, the ability for technical creativity.
When parents see only “pampering” and “dirty” in the child’s labor activity, this contributes to the development of a sense of inferiority in him. The danger of this stage is the feeling of inadequacy and inferiority.
5. Adolescence and early youth. Classical psychoanalysis notes at this stage the problem of "love and jealousy" for one's own parents. A successful decision depends on whether a person finds an object of love in his own generation. This is a continuation latent stage according to Freud. Age - 12-18 years. Stage objective: identity versus role confusion. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: dedication and fidelity.
The main difficulty at this stage is the confusion of identification, the inability to recognize one's "I". A teenager matures physiologically and mentally, he develops new views on things, a new approach to life, an interest in the thoughts of other people, in what they think of themselves.
The influence of parents at this stage is indirect. If a teenager, thanks to his parents, has already developed trust, independence, enterprise and skill, then his chances of identification, i.e., awareness of his own individuality, increase significantly.
6. Early adulthood. Freud's genital stage. Age: courtship period and early years family life, from late adolescence to early middle age. Here and below, Erickson no longer names age limits. Stage objective: intimacy versus isolation. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: affiliation and love.
By the beginning of this stage, a person has already identified his "I" and is involved in labor activity.
Closeness is important to him - not only physical, but also the ability to take care of another person, to share everything essential with him without fear of losing himself. The newly minted adult is ready to exercise moral strength in both intimate and comradely relationships, remaining faithful, even if significant sacrifices and compromises are required. Manifestations of this stage are not necessarily sexual attraction, but also friendship. For example, close ties are formed between fellow soldiers who fought side by side in difficult conditions - a model of closeness in the broadest sense.
The danger of the stage is the avoidance of contacts that oblige to intimacy. Avoiding the experience of intimacy for fear of losing the ego leads to feelings of isolation and subsequent self-absorption. If neither in marriage nor in friendship does he achieve intimacy, loneliness awaits him, he has no one to share his life with and no one to take care of. The danger of this stage is that a person experiences intimate, competitive, and hostile relationships with the same people. The rest are indifferent to him. And, only having learned to distinguish the fight of rivals from a sexual embrace, a person masters an ethical sense - a hallmark of an adult. Only now does true genitality emerge. It cannot be considered a purely sexual task. This is a combination of methods for selecting a partner, cooperation and rivalry.
7. Adulthood. Classical psychoanalysis no longer considers this and the subsequent stage, it covers only the period of growing up. Age: mature. Stage objective: generativity versus stagnation. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: production and care.
By the time this stage is reached, a person has already firmly associated himself with a certain occupation, and his children have already become teenagers.
This stage of development is characterized by universal humanity - the ability to be interested in the fate of people outside the family circle, to think about the life of future generations, the forms of the future society and the structure of the future world. To do this, it is not necessary to have your own children, it is important to actively take care of young people and to make life and work easier for people in the future.
Those who have not developed a sense of belonging to humanity focus on themselves, and their main concern becomes the satisfaction of their needs, their own comfort, self-absorption.
Generativity, the central point of this stage, is an interest in the order of life and the guidance of a new generation, although there are individuals who, due to failures in life or special gifts in other areas, do not direct this interest to their offspring. Generativity includes productivity and creativity, but these concepts cannot replace it. Generativity is the most important stage of both psychosexual and psychosocial development.
8. Maturity. Age: retired. Stage objective: integrity versus despair. Valuable qualities acquired at this stage: self-denial and wisdom. The main work in life is over, it is time for reflection and fun with the grandchildren. The feeling of wholeness, meaningfulness of life arises in someone who, looking back at the past, feels satisfaction. The one to whom the life lived seems to be a chain of missed opportunities and unfortunate blunders, realizes that it is already too late to start all over again and the lost cannot be returned. Such a person is overcome by despair at the thought of how his life could have developed, but did not. The absence or loss of the accumulated integrity is expressed in the fear of death: it is not perceived as a natural and inevitable completion of the life cycle. Despair expresses the consciousness that there is little time left to try to start new life and experience other paths to wholeness.
While psychoanalysis still draws a line between the psychosexual and the psychosocial, I have tried to bridge the two.
E. Erickson
Erik Homburger Erikson (1902-1994) is rightfully considered one of the outstanding followers of psychoanalysis and representatives of ego psychology. His parents, of Danish origin, separated before the birth of his son. At the age of three, his adoptive father was the children's doctor Homburger, who gave Eric care and his name. Eric's childhood passed in the German city of Karlsruhe, where he graduated from high school and gymnasium. After a short trip, Erickson studied at a local art school. Another formal education he didn't get any more. In 1925, thanks to an acquaintance with Dr. Peter Blos, Erikson began teaching in Vienna at a children's school, the teaching staff of which had psychoanalytic training. Anna Freud took part in the leadership of the school, with whom Erickson subsequently underwent a personal analysis. Erickson had the good fortune to do clinical work with August Eichhorn, Edward Bibring, Helen Deutsch, Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and other psychoanalysts around Sigmund Freud. The subject of his close study is the process of development of children, as well as the social conditions necessary for this. In 1933, after marrying a young American woman, Joan Serson, Erickson moved to America, where he was a professor at Harvard University for most of his life.
Erickson's merit was that he, having psychoanalytic information, developed a holistic theory of the development of the individual, for the first time extending it far beyond the oedipal phase of development. Erickson suggested that along with the stages of psychosexual development described by Freud (oral, anal, phallic and genital), during which the direction of attraction changes (from autoeroticism to an external object), there are also psychological stages of development of the Self, when the individual establishes basic guidelines in relation to themselves and their social environment. The formation of personality does not end in adolescence, but extends throughout life cycle . The individual develops continuously throughout his life according to a certain "basic plan", while relatively stable phases of development are replaced by periods of crisis, during which there is a "consolidation" of all mental functions. The process of development takes place in the so-called nuclear family, which is significantly influenced by social trends and cultural crises.
To confirm his own hypotheses, Erickson used the richest clinical experience, long-term observations of children, as well as comparative studies of modern and traditional culture (mainly on the example of Indian tribes).
E. Erickson made an invaluable contribution to the development of such an important concept as identity. Currently, this term is widely used in the scientific, psychological and social environment. At the same time, identity was not clearly defined by Z. Freud and still does not have a single meaning. Erickson pointed out that for the first time this concept was purposefully applied and researched during World War II at the Veterans Rehabilitation Clinic on Mount Zion. Once in extreme conditions war, people lost their sense of identity and the continuity of time. They have lost control of the ego. Therefore, Erickson proposed to designate this phenomenon as identity I, or ego identity, and the state of loss of identity - as identity crisis. Erickson wrote: In the twenty years since the term was first used <…> it has acquired so many meanings that, it would seem, it is time to expand the boundaries of its use » .
IN different time this term was used in different values. Initially, however, the understanding of identity as identity of a person to himself. In modern psychoanalysis identity defined as " a relatively long, but not necessarily stable, perception of oneself as unique, coherent, unified in time » .
The concept of identity has something in common with several closely related concepts. For example, self- a holistic personal organization; I-concept- "self-explanation", including predominantly conscious aspects of the self; identity- the subjective experience of oneself as a constant in time and different from others. While identity denotes a firmly learned and personally accepted self image in all the richness of the relationship of the individual to the world around him, a sense of the adequacy and stability of his own Self (regardless of changes in the Self and the situation) is what provides the ability to fully solve the problems that arise before the personality at each stage of its development.
The sense of identity arises with the child's awareness that he exists as an individual in a world of other objects, but also possesses own desires, thoughts appearance, different from others. The sense of identity reaches a certain stability only after the end of adolescence, when the problems of bisexual identification are resolved. Identity is an indicator of a mature (adult) personality; I manifests itself in the views of the individual, ideals, norms, behavior and role in society. Currently, the concept of identity is used in a wide variety of aspects: personal identity, group (racial, national, family, professional) gender (gender) professional, etc.
E. Erickson considered identity main characteristic, applicable to the gradual personality development through phase-specific psychosocial crises. He built original scheme human development throughout life, based on epigenetic principle, as a result of which his periodization of the life path received the same name. The term was borrowed from Harvey William Harvey's biological doctrine of the germinal development of an organism, where epigenesis was understood as a process carried out by successive neoplasms.
In 1950, Erickson's main work, Childhood and Society, was published, where the researcher significantly expanded the traditional understanding of the stages of psychosexual development. In his opinion, at each stage of development, new modes, or ways, of organizing a holistic human behavior appear. For example, at the first, oral, stage, this is a mode of absorption, at the second, retention-release, etc. Erickson emphasized the importance for development reciprocity individual factors and society as a whole, since even the attitude of a mother to a newborn child is largely determined by the social prescriptions prevailing in the culture.
The stages of development are also stages in the formation of psychosocial identity. In total, Erickson allocated eight steps of life .
In the first stage (0-18 months), which Erickson, following psychoanalysis, calls oral-sensory(or incorporative, absorbing), the infant solves the fundamental question of his entire subsequent life: whether he trusts the world around him or not? Naturally, the issue of basic trust in the world is not resolved in a discursive-logical way, but in the communication of a child with an adult and contact with his environment through the absorption of sounds, colors, light, heat and cold, food, smiles and gestures, etc. Erickson points to the mother's key role in building basic trust in the world. At the same time, he considers the child's ability to calmly endure the disappearance of the mother from sight as a criterion for the formation of trust in the world.
The progressive autonomy of the infant (the ability to move, the development of speech, manipulative abilities) allows the child to move to the second - musculo-anal stage (18 months - 4 years). At this stage, two new modes appear - retention and release. Accordingly, the second vital task becomes gaining autonomy versus shame and doubt. If adults are over-demanding to a child or, on the contrary, in a hurry to do for him what he can do for himself, then he develops shyness and indecision. When a child is scolded for soiled pants or broken cup, then it is also a "contribution to the development" feelings of shame and self-doubt. At this age, the child internalizes what Erickson called the eyes of the world, which determines his subsequent attitude to the principles of law and order.
The third stage (4 years - 6 years) is named locomotor-genital. IN classical psychoanalysis this phase is called the oedipal phase. Here the child seeks to penetrate, conquer and overcome. At this age, the space of the child’s life activity expands, he begins to set goals for himself, come up with activities, show ingenuity in speech, and fantasize about his own grandiosity. This stage is imbued with a spirit of competition, which can lead to feelings of defeat and castration. From this moment on, the child will never leave the feeling of internal discord. The result of this period of life is both a bitter sense of guilt and a sweet feeling of having one's own initiative.
Fourth stage (6–11 years) - latent, differs from the previous ones, because there is no new source of internal discord in it. It has to do with the possession of the child. various skills, with training. The child actively learns cultural symbols. This age is the optimal time for learning and introducing discipline. The child must now learn to seek recognition through actual achievement. The school becomes the spokesman for the demands of society as a whole. The main danger lies in the fact that the child may acquire here a stable sense of inferiority - incompetence. To eliminate the consequences of the previous phases and overcome feelings of inferiority, many children show excessive application, which can later turn into automatic conformity.
Fifth stage (11-20 years old) - teenage years And early youth is key to acquiring a sense of identity. At this time, the adolescent fluctuates between the positive pole of self identification and the negative pole of role confusion. A teenager is faced with the task of combining everything that he knows about himself as a son / daughter, a schoolboy, an athlete, a friend, etc. He must integrate all this into a single whole, comprehend, connect with the past and project it into the future. With a successful course of the crisis of adolescence, boys and girls develop a sense of identity, with an unfavorable - confused (diffuse) identity, coupled with painful doubts about oneself, one's place in a group, in society, with an ambiguity in life prospects.
For this reason, Erickson introduces the term psychological moratorium, which denotes a crisis period between youth and adulthood, during which multidimensional complex processes of acquiring an adult identity and a new attitude to the world take place in a person. The crisis that has not been overcome causes a state of identity diffusion, which forms the basis of the specific pathology of adolescence. Under adverse conditions, a mental moratorium can take on a protracted character and last for years, which is typical for the most gifted people.
Sixth stage (21 years - 25 years) - early adulthood,- according to Erickson, it marks the transition to solving adult problems on the basis of a formed psychosocial identity. Now that u young man a sufficiently strong sense of self-identification has been formed, he is ready to connect his identity with the identity of other people. Young people enter into friendships, marriages, children appear. Only now can true genitality emerge. Erickson significantly expands the concept of genitality, including in it, in addition to the reciprocity of orgasm, a number of psychosexual characteristics: relationships with a partner with whom a person wants and can experience mutual trust, wants and can harmonize life spheres and produce offspring, which will provide all stages of satisfactory development.
Thus, the main condition for harmonious sexual relations is capacity for intimacy. In the event that it is not sufficiently developed, a person tends to isolation, which in turn gives rise to depression, psychopathology of character or mental disorders. Isolation does not necessarily mean living alone as an adult. It implies the absence of psychological intimacy and the exchange of identities, even in the presence of marriage, when the relationship can be described as "loneliness together." Thus, the intrapsychic content of this stage can be designated as intimacy versus isolation .
Seventh stage (25–50–60 years) – adulthood- is associated with the contradiction between a person's ability to develop and personal stagnation, regression of the personality in the process of everyday life, which Erickson refers to as generativity versus stagnation. The reward for mastering the ability to self-development is the formation of human individuality, uniqueness. A person acquires the ability to be himself. An important neoplasm is also the readiness to procreate and give oneself and one's life to another person.
Eighth stage (after 60 years) - maturity- completes life. Here, reaping the fruits of a lived life, a person either finds peace and balance as a result of the integrity of his personality, or is doomed to hopeless despair as a result of a confused life. The question is being decided: what will prevail - integrity or despair? The meaning of this stage is the integration of all parts of the personality, the result of which is a sense of moral satisfaction and an orientation towards moral values. On the other hand, an individual who has not been able to actively satisfy his needs becomes a hostage to a sense of despair and the meaninglessness of his life. Emphasizing the connection between the individual and the social process, Erickson writes: Healthy children will not be afraid of life if the old people around them have sufficient integrity. » .
Thus, the human personality develops in steps in accordance with individual programs. The Society tries to ensure and encourage the proper speed and consistency of their disclosure. Each stage of development has its strengths and weak sides and their own emotional crises. At the same time, failure at one stage can negatively affect the passage of the next stage or can be corrected by subsequent successes.
Erickson emphasizes how important it is to correlate the mechanisms of mutual adaptation of the individual and society. As an example, he cites the process of formation national identity, linking behavior specific people(for example, American mothers in relation to their children) with the history of the people. According to Erickson, moral and national identity has a function collective ego. For example, national character Americans is associated primarily with the value of individual initiative, which was the result of a number of circumstances: Protestantism, rational adaptation to hazardous conditions life, industrialization of the natural environment, individualism.
The last chapters of Erickson's work are devoted to a complex but meaningful analysis of prominent personalities: political career Hitler on the material of the book "My Struggle" (" Mein Kampf”) and the childhood of Maxim Gorky on the example of the Soviet film “Gorky’s Childhood”. In the case of Hitler's book, Erickson drew attention to its inherent qualities of myth and legend, in which historical truth and fiction are mixed in such a way that everything looks plausible. Analyzing the phenomenon of Hitler, Erickson comes to the conclusion that the “brown piper” touched the “necessary strings” of the Germans due to the crisis of the national identity of the Germans as a result of numerous historical traumas. Nazism offered real means of achieving a sense of common identity through racial superiority, Jew-hatred, and world war. His goal was not only to make the Germans forget about the defeat of Germany in the First World War, but also to completely cleanse German culture of the foreign values that struck it. As a result, the mutual identification of the leader with the nation and mass worship of their Fuhrer became possible: “The most brutal exploiters of the nation’s struggle to save identity were Adolf Hitler and his accomplices, who for a decade turned out to be the undisputed political and military masters of a great, hardworking and diligent people” .
According to Erickson, the fear of losing identity dominates the irrational motivation of any person, mobilizing the entire arsenal of anxiety emerging from childhood. In this critical state, the masses tend to seek salvation in pseudo identity. The total defeat of the people, according to Erickson, causes a feeling total uniqueness and willingness to submit to someone who can offer a sense of total power, cohesion and a new identity, ridding of a meaningless past. The history of totalitarian regimes is the most bright to that proof.
Analyzing the film "Gorky's Childhood", Erickson explores the qualities of the legend of Maxim's childhood and the resulting changes in the identity of Russian youth. He highlights the similarities between the legend of Hitler and Gorky. Both were headstrong boys and developed in a bitter struggle with the father figure. Both experienced in adolescence a mental shock from a meaningless existence and the futility of rebellion. Both were close to extreme despair.
In a brief historical excursion, the researcher recalls that two great Russian tsars - Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great - killed their sons (the first personally, the second - with the help of other people). Thanks to historical reality, the tsar in Russia became a symbol compassionate autocracy. Such sympathy for kings, cruel fathers and grandfathers is characteristic of masochistic submission.
In 1958, Erickson published The Young Luther, which combined the psychoanalytic and historical research. One of the central ideas of the book is that a great man's identity crisis can be the cause of historical change. Erickson vividly and convincingly describes the internal struggle and heartache a generously gifted person, which reflected the problem of the identity of most of the German people. Luther's inner split led him to rebel against his own father and increase his need for the power of God. With the help of the reform of the church, Luther tries to make the dogmas of reason out of the dogmas of faith. He preached that God's voice in the soul is one's own conscience. Thus, a believer becomes responsible for his choice - what to believe and what to do.
In 1969, Erickson wrote another book about a great man, Gandhi's Truth. As in the previous case, he was interested in the synthesis of forces (historical, geographical, socio-economic, ethical, individual) that determine the development outstanding personality. The study of the lives of people like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi reflected Erickson's deep interest in moral issues. In 1960 he gave a talk on the development of human virtues. In addition to the seven Christian virtues, he speaks of inner strength and activity, which are of great importance for a particular stage of development. Each stage generates its own virtue:
Erik Erikson used familiar concepts to show what exactly strengthens the totality vitality human within the framework of human relations with each other and with humanity as a whole. Harmonious combination psychodynamic method with biographical and historical analysis allowed Erickson to go far beyond individual development human and significantly expand the vision of psychosocial reality.
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Our team of experts is pleased to welcome you to educational portal, where we provide assistance in matters related to the most popular disciplines, such as the Russian language, physics, psychology, etc. Are you interested in what is the meaning of E. Erickson's epigenetic theory?
In the beginning, I would like to note that this discipline, psychology, is large-scale. Therefore, for a deep and thorough understanding of the topic, let's figure out what is commonly called psychology? PSYCHOLOGY is a science that studies the patterns of emergence, development, and functioning of the human psyche, as well as a group of people. After we have clarified the main provisions of the science under study, we proceed to a systematic consideration of the following terms that will often be encountered in today's topic: PERSONALITY, PSYCHOLOGY, THEORY, BASIS, DEVELOPMENT.
PERSONALITY- this is a relatively stable integral system of intellectual, moral-volitional and socio-cultural qualities of a person, expressed in the individual characteristics of his consciousness and activity. THEORY It is a doctrine, a system of ideas or principles. It is a set of generalized provisions that form a science or its section. A BASE is the foundation of something. DEVELOPMENT - it is a complex process of transition from one state to another, more perfect, a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, from simple to complex, from lower to higher.
It is worth noting that the theory of E. Erickson, just like the theory of A. Freud, arose from the practice of psychoanalysis. E. Erickson created a psychoanalytic concept about the relationship between "I" and society. At the same time, his concept is the concept of childhood. The main task of E. Erickson was to develop a new psychohistorical theory of personality development, taking into account the specific cultural environment.
Let us add that ritualization in human behavior- an interaction based on an agreement of at least two people, who resume it at certain intervals of time in repeating circumstances; it is essential to the "I" of all participants.
Stages of ritualization according to E. Erickson:
- infancy - reciprocity (religion);
- early childhood - the distinction between good and evil (judgment);
- game age - dramatic development (theater);
- school age - formal rules(school);
- youth - solidarity of beliefs (ideology).
It should be noted that this concept of E. Erickson (theory) is called epigenetic concept life path of the individual and is an integral part of the life of every person. I hope that you have mastered the topic of today's lesson. If something remains incomprehensible from this topic, you can always ask a question that concerns you.
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