Erikson's Theory of Personality and the Stages of Psychosocial Development - Report Example

Running Head: SCHOOL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED CHILDREN School and Emotional Development of Intellectually Gifted Children Name: Institution: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Erikson's theory of personality and the stages of psychosocial development 4 Gifted Children and Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development 6 Children and adults 7 How the socio-affective characteristics or dilemmas have influenced the development, beliefs, priorities and actions of Erik Erikson 11 Conclusion 15 References 16 Introduction Virtually every person in the field of the gifted education is considered an expert on social and emotional development of the gifted students. This implies that every adult person such as parents, teachers or school administrators is an expert on social and emotional issues of the gifted students. A number of factors work in collaboration to create situations that lead to competing advice, especially by individuals who mean well, though may not have enough research on social and emotional development of the gifted students and their society at large (Coleman & Cross, 2001). Erik Erikson originates from Frankfurt, Germany and was born on June 15, 1902 who is associated with little mystery concerning his heritage. Research indicates that his biological father was perceived to be unnamed Danish man who earlier on abandoned Erik's mother before he was out of his mother’s womb. On the other hand, Erik’s mother, Karla Abrahamsen, was just a young Jewish woman who managed to raise him alone for a period of three years of his early life. She afterward married Dr. Theodor Homberger, who later became Erik's pediatrician, and decided to move to Karlsruhe in southern Germany. Throughout his lifetime, the development of identity is considered to be one of Erik’s major concerns as well as in his psychosocial development theory. Therefore, when Erik became an American citizen, he decided to officially change his name initial to Erik Erikson. Related to this was Erikson's son known as Kai Erikson, who believes it was a decision to identify himself as a more self-made man. He produced a publication on Childhood and Society that contained summaries of his entire studies among the Native Americans. He was also responsible for analyses of the Maxim Gorkiy and Adolph Hitler, as a discussion of American personality and a basic delineation of his version of the Freudian theory. Such themes as the influence of culture on individual’s personality as well as the analysis of historical figures were common in other works. Gandhi's Truth is one of them, which won him Pulitzer Prize in addition to the national Book Award. It can be examined that Erikson is a more Freudian ego-psychologist. He is much more of society and culture-oriented than the most Freudians, as one might expect from an individual associated with anthropological interests, and thus Erikson often pushes the natural feelings and the unconscious in more practical manner out of the main picture. Conceivably it is because of this that Erikson has become popular among the Freudians and non-Freudians comparable. Through his epigenetic principle, Erik became most famous for his unique work in both refining and expanding the Freud's theory of the eight stages. According to Erikson, development functions by the principle of epigenetic. He argues in this principle that people develop through a predetermined and unfolding of their personalities within eight stages. Therefore, individual’s progress through in each stage is partly determined by their success, or lack of successful attempts made within all the preceding stages (White, 1998). Erikson's theory of personality and the stages of psychosocial development Erikson a Neo-Freudian, has largely been identified as an "ego psychologist" interested in the study of the stages of development, across the entire lifespan of a human being. This is because each of Erikson's eight stages of the psychosocial development is commonly marked by a conflict through which a successful resolution will lead to a favorable outcome. For instance, trust vs. mistrust and through an important event for which such conflict determines itself around, such as the meaning of person’s life. Each stage has favorable outcomes that Erikson refers to them as "virtues", a term that is used within the context of Eriksonian personality development work. This is in the same way it is applied to medicines to mean "potencies." Erikson's research implies that each person must learn how to hold firmly both the extremes of every challenge that is specific to life-stage, particularly those in tension with each other, not eliminating one end of the tension. It is only when both the extremes established in a life-stage challenge are implicit and accepted as needed and useful, can the most favorable virtue for such stage surface. As a result, 'trust' and 'mis-trust' both need to be understood and accepted, basically for the realistic 'hope' to surface as a practicable solution at the initial stage. Similarly, both the 'integrity' and 'despair' are required to be understood and embraced, so as the actionable 'wisdom' to become known as a viable solution at the final stage (Eagle, 1997). It is apparent that Erik Erikson assumed that every human being undergoes a specific number of stages in order to reach his or her own full development. He theoritized eight stages through which a human being goes through, starting from birth to death. This means that Erikson elaborated the Freud's genital stage into another stage known as adolescence, and decided to add other three stages that lead to adulthood. There Erikson is credited with his ability to become one of the originators of the Ego psychology that stressed on the role of the ego as a more servant of the identification. Erikson considered the environment in which every child live to be crucial to providing the growth, adjustment as well as the source of his or her self awareness and identity (Eagle, 1997). Gifted Children and Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development Identification of the giftedness is linked to the early evidence of ability. Therefore, any potential success of a given identification process in locating children with extraordinary ability, is perceived to be a subject to the level at which children have developed their sense of autonomy as they engage in the self-initiating behaviors. The inability to resolve the crises of the preceding three states will lead a negative impact on the later life. Erik also argued that the culmination of failing to solve the crises will automatically reduce the possibility of children being considered or identified as gifted. This is related to Howard Gardner idea of multiple intelligences and education. The work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences has caused a profound impact on both thinking and practice within the education sector. This is particularly in the United States where the concept of multiple intelligences is explored to examine why it has reached a ready audience amongst the educationalists as well as some of the key issues that center its conceptualization and realization (Brualdi, 1996).  In the day to day of both the psychometric and behaviorist periods, it was a common believe that intelligence was a one entity that was largely inherited. Therefore, human beings were initially a blank slate who could be trained in order to learn anything. However, the training was to be presented in an appropriate manner. Today, an increasing number of the researchers in intellectually giftedness a precise believe in the opposite. They argue that there is existence of a multitude of the intelligences that are quite independent of each other and different intelligence identified with unique strengths and constraints (Smith, 2008). Every human being’s mind is considerably far away from unencumbered at birth, and thus it becomes unexpectedly difficult to teach ideas that go against the early 'naive' theories of which challenge the normal lines of force in an intelligence as well as its corresponding domains. Although Howard Gardner's theory on multiple intelligences has not yet been readily accepted in the academic psychology, it has received a strong and positive response from various educators. This is because the theory has been embraced by a variety of the educational theorists and has had significant applications by both teachers and policymakers on the common problems of schooling. For instance, a number of schools in North America have resorted to structure the curricula in accordance with the intelligences in addition to their designing of classrooms and the whole schools in order to reflect the understandings which Howard Gardner develops. This implies that Howard Gardner’s theory can as well be found in the pre-school use, higher, vocational as well as adult education initiatives (Gardner, 2006). Children and adults Perhaps greatest innovation of Erik was to suggest not five stages, as it was the case with Freud, but eight. It is clearly shown that Erikson elaborated genital stage of Freud into adolescence in addition to his three stages of adulthood. This implies that people certainly do not stop developing psychologically and this is after the twelfth or thirteenth birthdays. Therefore, it becomes only right to widely apply any theory of the stages in order to cover the later development. Erikson also discussed on the interaction of generations, a concept he referred to as mutuality. Freud had presented it abundantly clear, arguing that a child's parents greatly influence his or her psycho-social development dramatically. However, Erikson challenged that children influence the development of their parents as well. For example, the giving birth of children in a couple's life, to a greater extent changes that life as well as moves the new parents along their own developmental paths. It becomes important and more appropriate to add a third and in some instances, a fourth generation to the main picture. This implies that many of us human beings have been largely influenced by our grandparents just as they have by us (Smith, 2008). An ideal and clear example of the mutuality can be observed in the problems experienced by the teenage mother. Although a mother and her child may seem to have a fine life together, it is often considered that the mother is still required to carry out the tasks of adolescence, for instance, finding out who she may be and how she can fit into the entire society. This suggests that the relationship she may have with the father of her child may be immature either on one or both sides, and thus if they fail to marry, automatically she will have to solve or deal with the problems associated with finding and developing a relationship. On the other hand, the infant is perceived to have the simple and straight-forward needs, and thus the most significant of these is the mother expected to have mature abilities and the social support for her child. This indicates that if the parents of the mother step in with a helping hand, as one could expect, then they will as well be thrown off of their own developmental tracks. This leads them back into the life-style they hoped to have passed, and which may seem to be terribly demanding. Therefore, the manner in which people’s lives intermesh are horribly complex and more frustrating to most of the theorist. However, ignoring such ideas means to ignore something that is vitally important about their development and personalities (Gardner, et al., 2001). One of the suggestions that Erikson made for adolescence within the society is the development of psychosocial moratorium. He examines that people have a tendency to become successful as fast as possible, yet few of the individuals have ever taken their time to interestingly figure out what does success mean to them. Such attitude towards having a thing as too much, Erikson refers to it as ego identity, a situation where a person is very much involved in a specific role and in a particular society as well as subculture to the extent that there is lack of a room left out for tolerance. Erikson refers to this maladaptive tendency as being fanaticism. He explains in detail that a fanatic believes in his own way as the only right way. Therefore, adolescents are known for their own idealism as well as for their tendency to view things in black-and-white. Such people prefer to gather others around them with the aim to promote their beliefs as well as life-styles regardless of others’ rights to disagree (Schickendanz, 2001). The lack of personal identity is perhaps still considered difficulty where Erikson refers to this malignant tendency as repudiation. According to Erikson most people repudiate their membership across the world of adults. Furthermore, they repudiate their specific needs for an identity. This means that some adolescents agree to "fuse" with a given group, especially the type of group that is very eager to give the details of their identities such as religious cults, militaristic organizations and groups formed on the basis of hatred as well as those groups which have separated themselves from some painful demands of a mainstream society. Others get involved in the destructive activities, drugs or alcohol trafficking as others withdraw into own psychotic fantasies. Nevertheless, they assume that being "bad" or "nobody" is better compared to not knowing one’s own identity. This calls for individuals who become successful to negotiate this adolescent stage since they will acquire the virtue that Erikson refers to fidelity (Gardner, 2006). Fidelity, therefore, means loyalty and the ability to live by the standards of societies despite their imperfections, incompleteness as well as inconsistency nature. In this case, the main idea is neither about blind loyalty nor accepting the imperfections. In any case, if one loves his or her own community, it means that person will always want to see it develop into the best it could become. On contrary, fidelity means that a person has found a place within that particular community, a place that motivates him or her to positively contribute to its development (Schickendanz, 2001). How the socio-affective characteristics or dilemmas have influenced the development, beliefs, priorities and actions of Erik Erikson Erikson's model of the psychosocial development is an important, meaningful and highly regarded concept. Based on the themes discussed his theory, Erikson examine life as a series of both lessons and challenges that help people to grow. This wonderful theory helps the people to tell why it is helpful for child and adults’ development. For example, there are various terms that describe Erikson's model which include bio-psychosocial and the human development cycle as well as its related variations. They entirely refer to the eight stages of the psychosocial theory, which as Erikson's most distinctive work and extraordinary model. The term 'psychosocial' is Erikson's expression which is effectively from the terms psychological or mind and social to mean relationships (Eagle, 1997). In his theory, Erikson assumed that his psychosocial principle will be considered genetically inevitable in its role to shape human development which takes place in the lives of all people. Erikson also referred to his psychosocial development theory as 'epigenesis' and ‘epigenetic principle' which signified the relevance of the concept to evolution in terms of the past and future happenings and genetics. In the theory, Erikson does not refer to epigenetic as the individual genetic make-up or its influence on each individual’s development. This seemed not to be central to Erikson's ideas instead he based his ideas on Freud and basically concerned with how people’s personality and behavior is very much influenced after an individual’s birth not before, particularly during childhood (Kornhaber, 2001). In relating nature to nurture which means debate on genes and experience, Erikson was majorly focused on the ideas of nurture and experience. Similarly, as other seminal concepts are developed, Erikson's model is very simple and elegant, yet more sophisticated. Therefore, it can be concluded that Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is the basis for either broad or complex discussion as well as in the analysis of an individual’s personality and behavior. It can also be used for understanding and facilitating the personal development of the self and others (Kornhaber, 2001). The eight stages of Erikson seem to give people a framework since they can talk about their culture in comparison to others. Therefore, Erikson and the rest of other researchers have discovered that the common pattern of psychosocial development holds across the cultures and times, and thus most of the people find it relatively familiar. This means that his theory meets the important standards of a personality theory. Therefore, Erikson is an excellent educator who captures one’s imagination to assess whether a person is convinced by the Freudian side or not. He produced two books that laid out a foundation for his theory. This included Childhood, Society and Identity that discussed about youth and crisis. The psychosocial theory of Erikson is very influential for the self-awareness and improvement, as well as for teaching and developing others. Although Erikson's model accentuates the sequential implication of the eight stages of character-forming crisis, the model also asserts that all humans continuously change and develop in their entire lives, and thus personality is not fully formed at the early childhood years. This seems to be a useful and optimistic idea which makes many to believe and take it as being realistic. It is an apparent view that significantly assists in encouraging oneself to consider the future as opportunity for people to change positively and develop, instead of them looking back to blame and regret. It is better for people to come through each crisis in order to deal with what may lie ahead of them. This implies that everyone can be able to change and grow irrespective of what they may have gone through (White, 1998). Understanding the reasons as to why people are like is considered to be gaining a meaningful self-awareness. This is always a helpful and vital step forward. Therefore, Erikson's theory, together with several other concepts featured in the discussion facilitates this meaningful understanding of the personal growth and development. It becomes important to suggest that the psychosocial theory must be taught to all the people, especially to the school children, teachers as well as parents. This is because it is accessible enough, and thus would greatly enable all the people of all the ages to identify with the relationships between the life experiences and human behavior. Particularly, on how the grown-ups can help instead of hinder the development of children into more rounded emotionally and mature people. Erikson was very enthusiastic to improve the manner in which children and the young people are educated and nurtured. Thus it would be right for his concepts to be more widely identified and used in people’s day-to-day lives, beyond the educational, clinical or counseling professions (Smith, 2008). In his personality development theory, Erikson presents his identity as a psychoanalyst and humanitarian. Therefore, his ideas of minds and relationship development are useful far beyond the psychoanalysis. This means that they are useful for any application involves personal awareness and development of the self or others. The theory essentially asserts that individuals experience some eight stages of the 'psychosocial crisis which significantly affect their personality development. It becomes important to argue that Erikson's concept remarkably incorporated the cultural and social aspects into the theory of Freud on biological and sexual orientation ideas. This is reflected in Erikson was ability to have strong interest as well as the compassion for all the people, especially young individuals (Sternberg, 1996). Erikson’s research was centered on the human societies which are far removed from the large and inward-looking world of the psychoanalyst's training. This makes the eight stages of Erikson’s theory to be considered a tremendously powerful concept. The model is easily accessible and evidently relevant to the contemporary life based on several and different perspectives in order to understand and explain how people’s personality and behavior develops. As a result, Erikson's theory is very helpful for teaching, self-awareness, parenting, guiding and counseling, dealing with conflicts, and for general understanding of the self and others (Coleman & Cross, 2001). One of the major lessons learnt is that generations influence each other. For example, it has been discovered that a parent obviously affects the psychosocial development of his or her child. In turn the psychosocial development of a child is affected by the parents’ experiences of dealing with their children as well as the pressures produced. This clearly helps to explain the reasons as to why parents or teachers often struggle to deal cautiously with the young people in the same way they can do in order to deal with their own emotional challenges (Schickendanz, 2001). Conclusion Erikson is much more of society and culture-oriented than the most Freudians, as one might expect from a person associated with anthropological interests. He often pushes the natural feelings and the unconscious in more practical manner out of the main picture. Development functions by the principle of epigenetic which indicates that people develop through a predetermined and unfolding of their personalities in eight stages. Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is the basis for either broad or complex discussion and important for the analysis of an individual’s personality and behavior. The model can also be used for understanding and facilitating the personal development of the self and others. The psychosocial theory must be taught to all the people, especially to the school children, teachers as well as parents. Mutuality is significant in the development of human personality since it reflects the effect of one generation on to other. This is especially between teachers and students as well as among the families, and in particular between parents and children. Erikson was very enthusiastic to improve the manner in which children and the young people are educated and nurtured. The psychosocial model is readily accessible and evidently relevant to the modern life. This is because Erik Erikson’s theory is based on several and different perspectives to help understand and explain how people’s personality and behavior develops. Understanding the reasons as to why people are like is gaining a meaningful self-awareness. Erikson is an excellent educator who captures one’s imagination to assess whether a person is convinced. The perspective of both giving and developing a positive difference for the future generations greatly echoes Erikson's humanitarian beliefs, thus enabled him to develop a more powerful concept. References Brualdi, A, C. (1996). Multiple Intelligences: Gardner's Theory. ERIC Digest', Eric Digests. Retrieved September 24, 2011 from, http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/multiple.htm Coleman, L. J. & Cross, T. L. (2001). Being gifted in school: An introduction to development, guidance, and teaching. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. Eagle, M (1997). Contributions of Erik Erikson. Psychoanalytic review. 84 (3), 337–47. Gardner, H (2006). Changing Minds. The art and science of changing our own and other people's minds. Boston MA. Harvard Business School Press. Gardner, H., Csikszentmihalyi, M & Damon, W. (2001). Good Work: Where Excellence and Ethics Meet, New York: Basic Books. Kornhaber, M. L. (2001). Howard Gardner' in J. A. Palmer (ed.) Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education. From Piaget to the present, London. Routledge. Schickendanz, J.A. (2001). Chapter 1 Theories of Child Development and Methods of Studying Children. Understanding Children and Adolescents (4th ed.), Allyn and Bacon, pp. 12–13. Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Successful intelligence. New York. Simon & Schuster. Smith, M. K. (2008). Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences, the encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved September 24, 2011 from, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm White, J. (1998). Do Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences add up? London. Institute of Education, University of London. Read More