Psychosocial Theory

Erik Erickson(33 slides)

creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

The different orientations

• Psycho-sexual• Psych-social• Innate genetics• Cognitive thinking• Environmental influences and control• Perception and perspective• Trauma and safety

The metaphor of construction

• We are going to construct a building in which there are various rooms which represent the different theories.

• How functional the building will be depends on your quality of materials and work.

PSYCHOSOCIAL

TRAUMA

COGNITIVE

ETHOLOGY

LEARNING

HUMANISM

THE PLAY HOUSE OF THEORY

Try and never forget

• Theories are tools and play things to help us recognize patterns and repeating systems.

• Never let them turn into rigid creeds of belief and reality.

Agreement versus understanding

• Our goal in learning should be understanding.

• When people agree or disagree learning stops.

• Our job is understanding the paradigm that is being put forth by the theory.

Your ability to use the theories wisely have the potential of helping yourself and your children.

Psychosocial Theory

• This theory stresses the importance of the developing ego strength of a person as he\she interacts with their social environments of family, friends, church, school and society.

• The stage growth is epigenetic (gradually unfolding)

Stage one: oral-sensory

• Birth to one year

• Task: Can I trust the world?

• Ego strength: hope

• Trust: continuity of support and needs consistently meant

• Distrust: lack of support, inconsistency, deprivation.

The parent’s job and the child’s job

• The parents job is to meet the child's needs.

• The child’s job is to have needs.

Stage two: muscular-anal

• Two to three years

• Task: Can I control my own behavior and trust myself?

• Ego strength: will power

• Autonomy: judicious permissiveness and support.

• Doubt: overprotective, over controlling and lack of support.

The parent’s job is to allow the child to have as much ego growth as possible so that means reigning in your own needs to control and have everything

your way.

Allow them to learn to depend upon themselves as frustrating as they may be.

The child’s job is to push the boundaries.

Toddler property laws

• 1. If I like it, it’s mine.• 2. If it is in my hand, it’s mine.• 3. If I can take it from you, it’s mine.• 4. If I had it a while ago it’s mine.• 5. If it looks like mine, it’s mine.• 6. If I saw it first, it’s mine.• 7. If it’s broken, it’s yours.

Stage three: locomotor-genital

• Four to five years

• Task: Can I become independent of my parents?

• Ego strength: purpose

• Initiative: encouragement and exploration opportunity.

• Guilt: lack of opportunity and feelings of inadequacy.

The parents job is to be supportive and provide chances for the child to do things on their own.

This is the time for growth and learning to trust them self.

The child’s job is to separate from the parent and become more self sufficient.The more they can do for themselves the better.

Stage four: latency

• Six to eleven years

• Task: Can I master new skills necessary to survive?

• Ego strength: competence

• Industry: training, education, learning, doing, experiencing.

• Inferiority: lack of , or poor training, education and learning.

The parent’s job is to provide opportunities for learning new things such as sports, hobbies, musical instruments, games, etc.

The child’s job is to explore and try new things.

Stage five: puberty and adolescence

• Twelve to eighteen years

• Task: Who am I? and what do I really believe?

• Ego strength: identity

• Identity: safe stable family, good role models and positive feedback

• Confusion: unclear feedback, inconsistent expectations and dishonest communication.

Identity has to come before intimacy...

If a child has not had the freedom to establish their own inner sense of identity then they will not be able to achieve intimacy in an adult relationship.

Too many young adults get married thinking that intimacy will bring about their identity but it won’t because it can’t.

Intimacy: the sharing of feelings and an inner identity is needed for that to happen.

The parent’s job is to provide a safe place where the teenager can explore his own sense of self.

If parents are too overbearing, controlling, or powerful then this will prevent the identity exploration from taking place.

Let the teenager win selected confrontations so they can begin to sense their own power and logic.

The child’s job is to safely challenge and rebel against the boundaries they parents have erected. Rebellion now is a piece of cake compared to rebellion

in middle age. It needs to take place now as a function of their identity construction.

Stage six: young adulthood

• Young adulthood

• Task: Can I give myself fully to another?

• Ego strength: intimacy

• Intimacy: warmth, understanding, trust

• Isolation: loneliness, withdrawal and feelings of not being safe.

The parent’s job is to relate to their child as a peer adult. Giving them respect and deference as another competent human being.

The parent needs to surrender their parental persona and create a friendship with their child based on equality.

The child’s job is to enter into adult relationships where they can stand as equal and have the identity to share with another their feelings, values and

thoughts in safe relationships.

• People say of marriage that it is boring, when what they mean is that it terrifies them: too many and too deep are its searing revelations. They say of marriage that is is deadening, when what they mean is that it drives us beyond adolescent fantasies and romantic dreams.

M. Novack

The Challenge Of Marriage

Stage seven: adulthood

• Adulthood

• Task: What can I offer succeeding generations?

• Ego strength: caring

• Generativity: a giving, a purposefulness and productivity

• Stagnation: a lack of values, and goals, empty of meaning.

The parent’s job is to enjoy the relationships they have built with their children and love the next generation of grand children.

• The family is exceedingly important for the kind of honesty and direct feedback that forces us as individuals living in a little world of illusion and egoism; To truly see ourselves as others see us. The family may be the only institution able to penetrate our egotism and illusion and force us to make our life many centered.

Michael Novak

Stage eight: maturity

• Old age

• Task: Have I found contentment and satisfaction?

• Ego strength: wisdom

• Ego-integrity: sense of closure, a living of values, having run the good race.

• Despair: bitter, mean spirited, dissatisfied and angry.

In which stage is the family more important than any other social institution*

• First stage: oral-sensory• Second stage: muscular-anal• Third stage: locomotor-genital• Fourth stage: latency• Fifth stage: puberty- adolescent • Sixth stage: young adulthood• Seventh stage: adulthood• Eighth stage: old age

• *In each stage the family is more influential and important than any other group except in the fifth stage when peers become the surrogate family for a few years.

The “success” stages in life...Success is...

• To not wet your pants in childhood...• To being well liked in adolescence...• To have sex in young adulthood...• To having sex in late middle age...• To being well liked in old age....• To not wetting your pants in senility.• To having coped with middle age crisis…

Hopefully we will never feel...

“Is this all there is?”

the end