Erik Erikson: The Pioneer of the Theory of Psychosocial Development - Research Paper Example

? Erik Erikson: The pioneer of the theory of psychosocial development Erik Erikson: The Pioneer of the Theory of Psychosocial Development Introduction Erik H. Erikson is a renowned child psychoanalyst whose researches and psychoanalytic theory primarily focused on the effects of culture and society on the psychological development of individuals. He is also famous for having developed the 8-stage model of human development as opposed to Sigmund Feud’s previous 5 stages of development. Erik Erikson spent a large part of his time studying the cultural lives of the Yurok people of northern California and the Sioux of South Dakota and then used the knowledge acquired regarding the social, cultural and environmental influences to further improve his psychoanalytic theory. Although Freud’s theory was focuses towards the psychosexual aspects of human development, Erikson’s improvement of the theory through the addition of other influences significantly helped to expand and broaden the perspective of psychoanalytic theory. This paper presents a historical biography of Erik Erikson. Early life Erik Erickson was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1902. His mother Karla Abrahamsen was Danish who was from a well known Jewish family. Although the information of his biological father has been scanty, his parents parted before his birth but the meticulously secured fact was that he was his mother’s child from adulterous merger which tells us that Erik never saw his mother’s original husband. His young Jewish mother raised him by herself afore getting matrimonial to a renowned physician, Doctor Theodor Homberger. Theodor was not Erik’sbirth father a fact that was agreed from Homberger for many years a fact that made Erikjumbled about his real beginning and destiny. He was later adopted by his step father Theodor Homburger in 1911. It is widely believed that Erickson’s early child hood life and teenage hood influenced his desire for psychological insight as he centered on identity. For example, according to Friedman (2000), the early curiosity and experience helped spark Erik’s knowledge on knowing the formation of identity his own identity as well included. Erikson’s interest in identity was further developed based upon his involvements in school; at the temple school, his other colleagues harassed him for being Nordic because he was tall, blue eyed and blonde. In addition at grammar school he was disallowed because of his Jewish background which was complex because he never understood his kinship as well as his origin well. According to Erik these early experiences aided stimulation of his interests in identity formation and continued to influence his work throughout his life. Career life Despite having been trained as a psychoanalyst, Erikson also published a number of books that transcended the discipline. For instance, He particularly applied psychoanalysis in addressing religious, historical and anthropological questions a part from developing his famous life span model of human psychological development. In his career when he finished his high school, Erikson experimented and perfected in art thereby spending some time travelling throughout Europe. Through his friend, he studied psychoanalysis and received a certificate from Vienna psychoanalytic society. In the initial periods, Erickson studied and taught art. It is after meeting with Anna Freud while still teaching at a school in Vienna that he carried out psychoanalysis of his life and later developed interest in the field of psychology. It is this association with the daughter of Sigmund Freud a psychologist that opened his psychological view and analysis of phenomena and issues around human behavior and mentality. With this interest he trained at Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute as a psychoanalyst and graduated in 1933. Having been greatly influenced by child hood interest he expanded his knowledge by studying Montessori education Method. One of the major aspects of this form of education is that it focused on child development and associated sexual stages (Friedman, 2000). He took a training position at a school created by Dorothy Burlinghan an associate of Anna Freud and Sigmund Freud who are still considered to be the father of psychosexual theory of the modern psychology. His analysis through these psychologists gave himself awareness and motivation which led and helped him not to fear being who he was. He met a Canadian instructor of dance called Joan Serson who was teaching at the school where he worked and fell in love with her. They later got wedded in 1930 and went on to have three kids. He later migrated to Denmark after the Nazis in Germany took over power. Erik moved to USA in 1933 and was offered a teaching position at Harvard medical school. He as well altered his name to Erik H Erikson from Erik Hombereger which was an objective of a way in which he wanted to change and fake his own personality which he had never believed in since his birth. He had a private practice in child psychoanalysis apart from his own teaching career. Contributions as a psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s perspective is widely referred to as psychosocial because his unique contributions to developmental psychology particularly in the applications of psychoanalysis as well as his inclusion of the effects of culture and society on the psychological development of individuals. His early contributions included a study on Indian American children which used a combination of clinical analysis and anthropological observation together with the ethnic history and economic circumstances. He is also famous for having developed the 8-stage model of human development as opposed to Sigmund Feud’s previous 5 stages of development. Erik Erikson spent a large part of his time studying the cultural lives of the Yurok people of northern California and the Sioux of South Dakota and then used the knowledge acquired regarding the social, cultural and environmental influences to further improve his psychoanalytic theory Although Freud’s theory was focused towards the psychosexual aspects of human development, Erikson’s improvement of the theory through the addition of other influences significantly helped to expand and broaden the perspective of psychoanalytic theory. As earlier been noted, Eric Erikson himself underwent psychoanalysis and this experience particularly made him develop great passion and interest in the psychology field of psychoanalytic. After migrating to the United States of America, Erikson was employed in various institutions as a psychoanalyst. In 1936 Erickson was employed in the University of Harvard in the institute of human resources. At the same time he also took teaching classes at the medical school. He also went taught at the University of California where he disagreed with the administrators as the university required the lecturers to sign loyalty oaths. These concepts were development on the earlier work of Sigmund Freud. Another major contributor to psychology that is accredited to Erickson is the concept of Ego Psychology which elaborated the role the ego plays in development and understanding of an individual. It is through his theoretical approach to psychological development that saw him get several awards ad recognition of his efforts in all his scholarly work as he endeavored to explain dynamics of the society and understand human behavior(Coles,1976). In the later days of his life, Erik held several teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley, in the San Francisco psychoanalytic institute, Yale, Austen Riggs centre and the Centre of Advanced Studies in behavioral sciences. He additionally published a number of books on theories and research including childhood and society where he talked of infancy oral sensory stage among others. Erikson got several awards including the known one which is his book Gandhi’s truth that was bestowed a Pulitzer and a nation-wide book honour. Among his major coveted awards included Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award in philosophy category and Religion for Gandhi's Truth which was in 1969. He received various honors and recognitions for his contribution to society and psychology. He retired from the university in 1970. Erickson had four children. He also contributed to a well understanding of personality as it is developed and shaped over the cost of the lifespan. Finally, his observation of children in the projection of the task stage, optimal time stage, virtue stage, mal-adaptation stage as well as malignancy stage which set a stage for further research in psychology is not left behind towards the contribution of this great psychologist. In summary, the announcement of his death on 12 May 1994 in Massachusetts took many by surprise and was a great loss to the literary world of psychology as the contributions he had made to the study were relevant and explained human behavior in a theoretical understanding just like the earlier founders of psychology. Erik seized a lot of time learning about the ethnic life of the Sioux of South Dakota and Yurok of northern California. He utilized the knowledge he gained of cultural social influences as well as environmental aspects to further progress his psychoanalytic theory. Developmental theory One of Erikson’s best known achievements was his remarkable contributions in the field of developmental psychology particularly his 8-stage model of human development which was done during the 1950s. Unlike his predecessors such as Freud who were focused on early childhood, Erik Erikson had more emphasis on the adolescence and adulthood. He is also renowned for having introduced the terms identity crisis as used in the contemporary developmental psychology to explain the social and psychological problems facing adolescents in their quest to find their identity. In his career, Erikson went beyond Feuds focus on dysfunctional behavior and decided to refocus on other ways in which a normal self can function successfully. Erik Erikson has made a great impact to the field of psychology with his developmental theory. Erikson increased our understanding of the ego showing how ID, ego and superego are created programme solvers which emerge out of a genetic, cultural and historical context of each and every individual in any social setting. He as well elaborated Freud’s stages of development making explicit a social dimension that were implied in in Freud’s theory though he never clearly and categorically stated these psychosexual stages. Erik also extended our concept of understanding personality development to embrace the entire lifespan for impulse development putting what he went through as a teenage because he was also highly affected by self-personality as an individual. When it comes to exploration he explored the impact of culture, society and history from the developing of personality and illustrated this in psycho-historical studies of influential and charismatic individuals. Erikson is a Freudian ego psychologist and this means that he accepted Freud’s ideas as basically correct including the more complicated and data table ideas such as the Oedipus and Electra complex. Erikson also applied some of the psychoanalytic concepts to develop comprehensive biographical histories of a number of remarkable personalities such as Thomas Jefferson and Mahtma Gandhi. In such works, Erikson used clinical analysis to develop a unique understanding of how the leaders and personalities were able to rise above untenable situations and forge new identities both form themselves and their citizens. In 1965, Erik developed the epigenetic principle a principle which states that human beings develop through a predetermined unfolding of their personality in several stages which include; task stage, a stage in which personality development involve certain tasks which are psychological in nature, optimal time stage, virtue stage, mal-adaptation stage and the malignancy stage where the tendency of too little positive and too much negative tasks are portrayed by individuals. Erikson observed that these stages are determined by our success in the previous stages. In his observation in these development stages, he believed that if there is interference in the natural order of development then the whole development process is ruined hence there is no point of rushing a child to grow fast for these stages follow a systematic process. He finally left the University of California in 1950 and went to work at Austen Riggs Center to work with young people who had emotional problems. He later came back to Harvard University in 1960 in the capacity of professor of human development. While at the university his contribution to psychology was acknowledged. He came up with the eight stages of development that were widely known as “Eight Stages Man”. Whereby he puts across theory of developmental psychology by taking onto consideration the eight stages that every human being has to go through from the time is born up to his death (Schnell, 1980) . Although Erikson recognized some of the basic perspectives of Freudian theory, he believed that Freud has some misjudgments regarding a number of important dimensions of human psychosocial development. For example, Erikson suggested that human development is a continuous process that occurs throughout an individual’s life span and this was a direct contradiction to Feuds theory that was based on the assumption that human personality is formed and shaped during the childhood up to the age of 5. References Coles, R. (1976), The writings of Erik H. Erikson. The Psychohistory review 3, 42–6.  Erikson, Erik H, (1979). Dimensions of a New Identity: The Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities.Washington: Norton & Company, Inc. Friedman, L. (2000). Identity's architect: a biography of Erik H. Erikson. Harvard University Press. p. 29. George .S. (1976)"Byways of Our National Character," New York Times, Schickendanz, Judith A. (2001). Chapter 1 Theories of Child Development and Methods of Studying Children. Understanding Children and Adolescents (4th ed.). Allyn and Bacon. pp. 12–13. Schnell, R. (1980), Contributions to psychohistory: IV. Individual experience in historiography and psychoanalysis: significance of Erik Erikson and Robert Coles", Psychological reports 46, 2, 591–612. Read More