This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" by Lori Gottlieb. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Who is Erik Erikson? How is Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of development different from Freud’s Psychosexual theory?
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was a German-American psychologist and psychoanalyst who is best known for his theory of psychosocial identity development. Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory marked a shift from Freud’s Psychosexual Theory in that it conceptualized psychosocial development across the entire lifespan instead of just childhood.
Here is an overview of Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory.
Erik Erikson: Psychosocial Theory of Development Through the Lifespan
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory posits that personality takes shape in a predetermined order through 8 stages of psychosocial development. Each stage comes with a crisis that the person must face before moving on to the next.
1. Infant: trust vs. distrust—at this stage the infant is almost totally helpless and is completely dependent upon his or her caregivers. Whether those caregivers provide reliable and adequate care for the infant will have a large impact on his ability to trust people later in life.
2. Toddler: independence vs. doubt—the child is beginning to discover his own abilities, but if overly criticized or coddled during this time, he may come to doubt his self-sufficiency.
3. Preschooler: drive vs. guilt—the child will start interacting with others, inventing various forms of play and asking many questions. However, if these tendencies are repressed or if the child is treated as a nuisance, he may develop feelings of guilt around “bothering” others.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Maybe You Should Talk to Someone summary :
- How a psychotherapist found herself in need of therapy
- How the therapist sees her own fears and feelings reflect in her patients
- Why you have to be ready to accept uncertainty if want to enjoy life
