One of the most famous theorists of human development is the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. He lived from 1902 to 1994 and was German. His life story was quite curious.

Erik Erikson's brilliant life

Erik Erikson was born in 1902 in Denmark and his mother, for that time, was considered a very advanced person and became pregnant with Erik without being married. When she found out about this she moved to Germany so that her son could be born there. Erikson grew up and his mother eventually married her son's pediatrician, who decided to change Erik's last name to that of her new husband.

The change of name, change of country and the fact of being inserted in a new reality made Erik rethink about his life. In addition, the remarriage of his mother, which was not very common for that time, provoked in Erikson several doubts, several identity crises, so that when he became of age he called himself Erik Erikson, remembering that the root "son" means "isson of".

So it is noticeable that the psychoanalyst had many conflicts regarding his identity, for being born to a father who did not take him as a son, for also having changed country and the whole change of last name. He decided to christen himself Erik Erikson, which was Erik his own son.

Still on Erik Erikson's life

Erik was a very lively, strong, and energetic person. His stepfather was a doctor and wanted very much for him to become a doctor too, but his stepson didn't want to. When he came of age, Erik started studying art in Germany, but soon got tired of it and decided to join a friend and travel around Europe to make art.

When he returned to Germany, Erik went to see Ana Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter She saw in him a spirit prone to understanding human nature and invited him to take a course in psychoanalysis at the Freud Institute.

Of course, he accepted and soon graduated in psychoanalysis, although he had had previous training, i.e. an undergraduate degree.

Erik Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development

Erik has some differences with Freud's theories, mainly because Freud sees human development from a theory that is called Psychosexual and Erikson develops a Psychosocial theory, because for his understanding, the human being does not stop developing, unlike what was proposed by Freud whodeveloped the five developmental stages in which they would stop at the period of puberty.

Erikson, in turn, works with the phases of development until the end of the subject's life and says that the environment in which the person lives is very important for his or her human development. So, we reiterate that Erik diverges from Freud on this point, thus creating the Psychosocial Theory of Development.

When Hitler rose to power, Erikson fled Germany and moved to the United States, where he made a career. There he had much contact with researchers in the field of anthropology and spent much time visiting remote communities in that region.

Theory of Psychosocial Development

The psychoanalyst observed other ways of living in American society in the middle of the 20th century. Through this investigation, he added to his theory several perspectives of anthropology, in which he developed the thought of how the human being is constituted from his interaction with the environment.

Within the Theory of Psychosocial Development, Erik said that personal development depends on the interaction between the subject and his environment. The medium for him played a fundamental role in the construction of each person's subjectivity and identity.

He agreed with other researchers that psychological growth occurred through stages and phases and refuted that at each stage, the individual grows from the internal demands of his ego, but also from the demands of the environment in which he lives, therefore, it is essential to analyze the culture and society in which the subject lives.

The psychosocial crisis

Each stage is crossed by a psychosocial crisis between a positive and a negative aspect of the personality. Thinking about today, it is as if at each stage we face a new challenge. And that the way each crisis is overcome throughout the stages will influence our ability to resolve conflicts inherent in life. This crisis can have a positive or negative outcome.

If it is a positive outcome, we build a richer, stronger and more robust ego. If it is a negative outcome, we establish a more fragile ego. In each crisis, the personality will restructure and reformulate itself according to the experiences lived, while the ego adapts to its successes and failures.

No one always succeeds, just as no one always fails. Therefore, according to the experiences we have we build our personality. Erikson approached human growth from the standpoint of conflicts (internal and external) in which the vital personality endures and re-emerges from each crisis with a greater sense of inner unity.

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Erik Erikson and the ego

Erik mentioned that if the outcome was positive, the individual would go through the phase as an adult with a healthy personality, with a certain unity in his personality and able to perceive himself and the world around him correctly.

You would have clear vision of who you are and who the others are. It forms for him a complete unity of personality. There were eight stages developed by Erik Erikson, but we will see this in a future post, but I leave below quoted what they are:

1. Basic trust versus basic distrust
2. Autonomy versus shame and doubt
3. Initiative versus guilt
4. Industry (in the sense of 'skill or ability') versus inferiority
5. Identity versus identity confusion
6. Intimacy versus isolation
7. Productivity versus stagnation
8. Integrity versus hopelessness

Freud and the personality

Freud conceived of the ego as the executive of the personality, an executive whose duties are to satisfy the impulses of the id, to manage the physical and social demands of the external world, and to try to live up to the perfectionist standard of the superego.

Erikson left a very special legacy for our growth as people and for lovers of the study of psychoanalysis.

Bibliographic References

HALL, Calvin; LINDZEY, Gardner, Theories of personality, 18th Edition, São Paulo, 1987.

JACOB, Luciana Buainain. psychosocial development: Erik Erikson. 2019. available at: //eaulas.usp.br/portal/video.action?idPlaylist=9684 Accessed on: 26 Jul. 202

This article was written by Wallison Christian Soares Silva ([email protected]), psychoanalyst, economist, specialist in Neuropsychoanalysis, post-graduate student in People Management, and student of Literature and Literature.