Analysis of Eridanus Thaw-Mawse's Focusing on Infancy, Adolescence, and Middle Adulthood - Case Study Example

Case Study Analysis Introduction This paper analyzes the case study of Eridanus Jocasto Thaw-Mawse focusing on three stages of his life including infancy, adolescence, and middle adulthood. Freud’s psychosexual theory of development and Erik Erikson’s stages of development have been used to facilitate the analysis. Freud’s theory of psychosexual development is amongst the most popular theories of development and at the same time, it is very controversial. Sigmund Freud proposed theories of psychosexual development to emphasize upon the importance of events experienced during the childhood but his theories were almost entirely focused upon the mental disorders instead of normal functioning. Freud described child development as a range of psychosexual stages. Freud outlined these psychosexual stages of development as “oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital” (Cherry, 2013). The pleasure-seeking energies get focused upon certain erogenous areas. This libido serves drives the individual’s behavior. Sigmund Freud considered that the personality of an individual is established mostly as he/she reaches the age of five years. Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory is also a very popular theory of personality in the field of psychology. According to Erikson, personality of an individual develops in stages. While Freud’s theory throws light upon the psychosexual aspects and experiences, Erikson’s theory highlights the significance of social experiences that an individual has at different stages in life. Both theories are commonly based on the assumption that the experiences that an individual has during the early stages of development influences his/her life in the later stages (Davis and Clifton, 1995). The Stages 1. Infancy The first unfortunate thing that happened in the life of Eridanus was the hospitalization of Philadelphia for several weeks. The first year of life is the stage of infancy during which the individual learns most of the things in life in general and develops a fair understanding of the relationships and their importance in particular. However, in order for an infant to achieve this successfully, it is imperative that he/she is given due attention and love of both parents and other relatives. Eridanus was too unfortunate to have the attention of his parents during infancy as a result of which, he was frustrated. This reflects from the fact that Eridanus became clingy with Philadelphia and her absence easily distressed him but Philadelphia had to struggle very hard to give her husband and son the attention that each of the two required. The case study suggests that Eridanus needed more attention and affection from his mother than what she could impart him. Freud describes the stage of infancy with the oral stage during which the infant is dependent upon the caretakers primarily mother to feed him/her. If the infant gets the diet in time, he/she develops trust and comfort and in the other case, develops discomfort and mistrust. According to the Erikson’s psychosocial stages theory, lack of attention from his mother established the foundation of mistrust in the personality of Eridanus that is evident in the events described in the case study related to his adolescence and adulthood. 2. Adolescence Eridanus’s adolescence almost started when he returned home from Nottinghamshire in the year 1944 and particularly when his secondary school started the following autumn. After three to four years of being distant from his parents, this was finally supposed to be the time when Eridanus could reunite with his parents and start a happy life, but was once again, too unfortunate to have that. His father’s attitude at home was aggressive and he frequently indulged in arguments with his mother. Eridanus chose to side with his mother in those arguments. Miso had a distant and deteriorating relationship with his father during the adolescence for many reasons including the inconsistence between his father’s behavior at home and pacifism. Soon after he had started his secondary school, Eridanus got the news that his parents were parting ways with each other and that was when Eridanus moved to Gorleston with his mother. Eridanus was a bright student with an inquisitive and concentrating mind. During his school, his stubbornness and the tendency to challenge authority grew. His good performance in studies paved the way for his entry into a highly reputable school through a scholarship soon after which his mother passed away and he was required to live with his father during the off-days from the school. Eradinus did not catch a glimpse of his mother’s body. When he went to his father’s place, Eridanus was introduced to two new ladies in his life; the first being his half sister Joyce and the other, Joyce’s mother Gwen as a result of which, Eridanus found out the reason of separation between his parents. Eridanus’s discomfort with Gwen can be sensed in his deliberate attempts to rile her by reciting poetry aloud. At Oxford, Eridanus once again was left heartbroken because of his unsuccessful attempts to gain the affections of Penelope and the Master of the college. Eridanus’s tendency to challenge the authority developed over the years became a reason of his termination of the service in army. According to Freud, a child needs the satisfaction of some libidinal desire and whether that need gets satisfied or not plays a very important role in the adult life of the individual. Unsuccessful completion of any of these early stages of development causes an individual to develop a fixation that affects his/her behavior and personality in the adulthood. On the other hand, successful completion of these psychosexual stages leads to the development of a healthy personality. Unsuccessful resolution of certain issues at their appropriate stages makes the room for fixation that persistently focuses upon the earlier achievement of the psychosexual stage. Freud describes the stage of adolescence as the genital stage and considers it the age when the adolescents tend to explore relationships like Eridanus does at his school with Penelope and the Master of the school. According to the Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, the age of adolescence is essentially the age in which the adolescents experience the conflict between identity and role confusion and the important events during this stage depict the quality of social relationships they would be able to develop later in life (About.com, 2013). Although the case study does not mention much about the development of the sense of identity in Eridanus during the stage of adolescence, yet the fact that he is able to decide between whom he does and whom he does not want to live with between his mother and father, the way he carries himself at the school and the sort of performance his shows in studies, and his growing tendency to argue with the seniors suggest that he has the basic confidence to have his own thinking which indirectly suggests that he has had a good sense of identity. In addition to that, the fact that Eridanus develops a good bond with Joyce and a bad one with Gwen suggests that he can make the distinction between what is right for him and what is not. This might be the reason why Eridanus also got promotions while serving in the police as an adult. 3. Middle Adulthood Eridanus’s middle adulthood lasted from the time when he was elevated to Detective Inspector at the age of 35 till his forced retirement from service at the age of 59. In the start of the middle age, Eridanus had started a long working relationship with Lewis Roberts who was a married detective sergeant and had two children. Eridanus kept in touch with Joyce but the police duty was too demanding to be there for her quite often. During his middle adulthood, life for Eridanus kept involving culture. Since he was not married, he was free of the essential responsibilities that entail marriage and thus indulged in such leisure activities as purchasing a Jaguar car and drinking single malts. Excessive consumption of alcohol led him to developing serious health problems at the age of 50. Eridanus married the nurse Yvonne Harrison who found him too dedicated to his work to be able to sustain the marriage and thus the marriage ended shortly. Another failed romance between Eridanus and an opera singer followed. Roberts noticed the increasing tendency in Eridanus to flirt with women belonging to all categories while at work. Eridanus could not work in harmony with the young police officers and circumstances for him at work after the departure of Roberts were not quite favorable since the new officers did not approve of his old values. At the age of 59, Eridanus got a forced retirement. Although he valued the freedoms of the bachelor life, yet he missed companionship at that age to overcome which, he drank even more. Freud proposes that an individual remains stuck in that psychosexual stage till the time that conflict is resolved. For instance, an individual who gets fixation during the oral stage may excessively depend upon others and tends to seek oral stimulation by means of such habits as smoking and drinking. This can be considered as the reason why Eridanus added drinking single malts while listening to Wagner in his apartment in Jericho. In addition to this, other depressing events that happened in his life like the attempted suicide by his niece Joyce also became a reason for the sustenance of his already excessive drinking. According to Freud’s psychosexual development theory, the genital stage persists throughout the adulthood and the goal for an individual remains to draw a balance among all areas of life. Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development considers the stage of middle adulthood as comprising the basic conflict of generativity vs stagnation and the important events during this stage include work and parenthood. Eriskson describes that the need of the mid adults is to nurture outlasting things and if they are successful in that, they get the feeling of accomplishment whereas failure leads to stagnation and shallow involvement in the worldly activities. Eridanus’s middle adulthood circumstances suggest that he failed in creating or nurturing things. He could not sustain his marriage with the nurse, then had unsuccessful relationship with the opera singer and subsequently flirted with almost any attractive woman at work. His growing unreliability as a member of the clubs speaks of his withdrawal of interest from the world. Conclusion The events that happened during Eridanus’s childhood had a profound impact on his whole life. Analysis of his life suggests that one factor that played the most destructive role in the life of Eridanus was insufficient attention of women to him during the early years of his life including adulthood. Freud’s and Erikson’s theories commonly attribute the mistrust in Eridanus’s personality to the lack of sufficient attention during infancy. First, his mother could not give her son the attention he required. Later, during the Second World War, when Eridanus and other children were evacuated and billeted in Nottinghamshire, Eridanus could not see his parents more often than just once every three months. Eridanus also had the feeling that Mrs De Vries favored her own sons more than him. This made him miss his mother even more, and might as well be the reason why Eridanus could not play and mix with the De Vries children. Later, Eridanus met Gwen as the reason of the separation between his parents that further strengthened an uncomfortable feeling about women in his heart. The women students at Oxford also played a very important role in Eradinus’s life and became a reason of the decline of his thus far successful academic career. Likewise, in his adulthood and till late in life, Eridanus could not build stable relationships with women. In light of Erikson’s psychosocial stages, Eridanus’s lack of ability to build stable relationships with women as an adult can fundamentally be attributed to the mistrust he developed during the stage of infancy when the caregivers in general and his mother in particular could not provide him with the amount of care and affection that would be sufficient for him. The mistrust kept him single for the most of his life and he could not sustain his marriage and died single. References: About.com 2013, Eriksons Psychosocial Stages Summary Chart, [Online] Available at http://psychology.about.com/library/bl_psychosocial_summary.htm [accessed: 5 January 2013]. Cherry, K 2013, Child Development Theories, [Online] Available at http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/childdevtheory.htm [accessed: 5 January 2013]. Davis, D, and Clifton, A 1995, Psychosocial Theory: Erikson, [Online] Available at http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/erikson.stages.html [accessed: 5 January 2013]. Read More