Ironically, the man behind the psychosocial stages of development struggled with finding his own identity for most of his life. Erik Erikson was born in Germany where his growing confusion began. By his adulthood, the United States was his new home; where he started a family of his own, and studied many children through various institutes and universities. Erikson is most well-known for his theory of the psychosocial development of humans and the concept of identity crisis.
Erikson’s own identity crisis began when he was just a young boy. There is not much known about Erikson’s biological father except he was a Jew living in Germany. Erikson was raised by his mother and a stepfather whom did not fully accept …show more content…
His findings show each stage has issues that must be resolved before one can move on to the next stage. The first stage begins with infants up to one year old who cannot proceed to the toddler stage unless they overcome the trust vs mistrust issue. The toddler may not move on to the preschool age of 3-6 years unless they overcome autonomy vs shame or doubt. The preschool issue is initiative vs guilt, the elementary school stage issue is competence vs inferiority. As we reach the later years, issues become more specific and similar to self-actualization Such as finding your identity in adolescence, and intimacy in young adulthood. The last two stages include middle and late adulthood where the person must find feelings of generativity and not stagnation to continue on to feel integrity over despair in late adulthood. These stages are used by many psychoanalytic psychologists everyday who study behavior and development. It has proven to be accurate although some may stay in a stage longer or shorter than Erikson might has predicted, his most valued contribution to psychology allows us to better understand the human mind as it