Theories of Human Growth and Development - Essay Example

Theories of Human Growth and Development Various theories exist to explain the human growth and development. Among them is Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of human development and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality. According to Erik Erikson, life is a learning process that is characterized by a series of lessons and challenges. His principles emphasize that the stages involved in life are experienced by everyone and shape their development. In the model for this theory, there are eight stages that stretch throughout the life of a human being. The stages are associated with a crisis. The psychosocial crisis involves a psychosocial necessity, requirement or need of a person. This need conflicts with what the society offers, and the choice of the individual affects their growth and development. The eight stages can be described as in table 1 below (Carter, 1980): stage crisis Basic virtue age 1 Conflict of mistrust and trust hope 0-1.5 years 2 Conflict of shame and autonomy Will 1.5 – 3 years 3 Conflict of guilt and initiative Purpose 3-5 years 4 Conflict of inferiority and industry Competency 5-12 years 5 Conflict of role confusion and identity Fidelity 12-18 years 6 Conflict of isolation and intimacy Love 18-40 years 7 Conflict of stagnation and generativity Care 40-65 years 8 Conflict of desperation and ego/wisdom wisdom 65+ years Table 1: Stages of human development according to Erik Erikson Once a person completes a developmental stage in their life, they develop a positive personality and gain the associated virtue. With the acquired virtue, the individual can resolve any future crisis associated with a similar attribute. On the other hand, people who fail to accomplish the required stages of development in their lives end up getting unhealthy personalities and lack the necessary primary virtues to solve a similar crisis. As such, their sense of self also deteriorates. However, people who skip a particular stage can successfully resolve it at a later stage in life. From the case study, Mrs. Baxter is a 32-year-old, meaning that she is undergoing the intimacy versus isolation stage of her development. As such, she needs love and affection to succeed at this point. This love can be displayed in her marriage to Mr. Baxter, giving herself into their love and affection. She had probably experienced a lot of security, safety and commitment. However, all this is lost in the death of her husband. She does not know how to move on and love someone else affectionately enough to create room for another marriage. Instead, she expects love and security from her teenage son and thus gets hysterical every time Mo goes out. Having lost her husband while she was driving makes her want to keep her child to herself and away from any danger that might take him from her. She is not aware that in her quest to protect Mo and give him all her affection, she interferes with his development. She does not allow him the freedom he requires to properly experience life and its stages. As such, her developmental problems have a consequence on Mo’s growth and development. The problems associated with the death of her husband involve financial issues and problems with moving around her house. However, the fact that she lost a husband makes her depressed such that the conflict between intimacy and isolation is not entirely resolved. The resulting depression leads to the mood swings and verbal outbursts she directs at Mo. This conflict within her deteriorates her growth as a young adult. She does not realize it because it happens without her realizing or planning for it. Her mind and unconscious state is in charge of her actions, behavior and personality. On the other hand, Mo is a 13-year-old. According to Erik Erikson, he is in the 5th stage of human development, which has the crisis of ego identity versus confusion. Being an adolescent, Mo is in a phase in which he requires to identify his role in the society. He is entering into adulthood and wants to fit in the society. Contributing to the community requires that he defines his roles as an adult. The death of his father eliminates the father-figure in his life and a possible role model who would have guided him into adulthood and the appropriate roles to take up. The mistreatment he gets from his mother through verbal outbursts and mood swings distorts his development at this stage. As such, he develops confusion and does not have an idea of who or what he wants to be in future (Lenzenweger & Clarkin, 2005). He, therefore, lacks concern for his education because he is not yet sure whether he requires it in his future as an adult. This is evident in his dropping performance at school. Confusion is also created in Mo because the society now defines him as the man of the house. He was not fully prepared and psychologically equipped for such a role. He is still developing physically, emotionally and psychologically. According to the society, a man should take care of his family and sort out internal issues such as providing for the family. However, Mo is yet to attain this position in the right process of growth and development. He is bound to get mixed up. To show his confusion, he turns to violence. He engages in fights with his classmates, who probably have a normal life and living parents, unlike him who lost his father. Another theory of human development is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality (Beckett & Taylor, 2010). According to Freud, the human behavior and personality is dependent on the interaction among three psychological components of the mind. These components are one’s id, ego and superego (Kahn & Wright, 2013). Freud notes that the behavior and personality of an individual are shaped by the psychological conflicts that unconsciously take place in their lives. The conflicts are more of a competition between biological needs and what the society expects. The ability of one to get over these conflicts successfully determines their future ability to function as adults (Freud, 2011). This theory notes that the id, ego and superego of a person interact dynamically and are sources of psychosexual stages of the human development (Archer, 1992). The first phase is oral (up to 1.5years). This stage involves the use of the mouth in a child, especially in feeding and suckling. Through this stage, the child develops trust for the people they depend on. Lack of successfully accomplishing this stage leads to future habits of smoking, drinking, and negative mouth-based behaviors. The affected person also gets issues of trust and dependency, and they end up being aggressive. The second stage is the anal one (1.5-3 years), which involves training the child in the use of the toilet. Failing in this stage leads to anal retentive characteristics of extremely tidy people or anal expulsive personalities of extremely messy people (Beckett, 2002). When one fails in the phallic stage (3-5 years), they develop poor relationships with their parents. This stage involves establishing relationships with a certain parent depending on their sex. Failure to succeed in the fourth latency stage (5-12 years) develops an individual with socially unacceptable behavior. In the course of this stage, sexual feelings are suppressed. The individual develops their ego and superego at this stage and explore their society. The children at this stage are mostly in school and tend to develop relationships with their peers. They also begin to realize their hobbies and interests, directing their suppressed sexual energy in this direction. Through this stage, the individual gets the chance to develop their interactive and communication skills. They also gain confidence in themselves and can even be daring enough to face some challenges in their lives. The genital stage (12years to adulthood) is crucial in determining the success of future relationships (Mandleco, 2004). In this stage, the individual develops an attraction to the opposite sex. This attraction is initially geared towards satisfying personal needs such as those of the need for security and emotional support. However, with time, the individual develops feelings of care and love for their partner. This state of caring for others can reach a point where one might sacrifice their needs for those of the people they love. From the case study, Mo’s father passed on when Mo was about ten years old. This age fits into the latency stage of Freud’s theory. As such, schooling and interaction with friends should guide him in the creation of positive personalities and socially acceptable traits and characters. Mo was beginning to develop social relationships with his schoolmates, and identifying the fact that he needed friends to live through school life. It is also at this stage that Mo should define his hobbies and likes, including his academic inclinations. However, the opposite is true for Mo. He does not define his likes in terms of school subjects and ends up failing in everything academic he does, despite having a previous good academic record. His declining academic performance is derived from the fact that he has failed to successfully accomplish this latent stage of his life. He does not develop the required personalities that a child his age should have. He ends up being violent in school and fighting other students. The fact that his mother cannot afford the kind of phones, laptops and other technological gadgets that other students have distances him from the rest. He cannot interact with them freely because he feels that they are in another social class. As such, he ends up hating them and being violent towards them. This antisocial behavior is attributed to poor development in Mo. His id, ego and superego still conflict and are yet to be fully defined. If this conflict is not successfully resolved, Mo might end up being antisocial all his life. Mo’s mother is in the genital stage as she heads to her adulthood. This stage was earlier successful for her as she even ended up being married. Her relationship, however, is cut short by the death of her husband. Her behavior changes towards her son and other people in society. She becomes threatened by anything else that might break her current relationship with her son, getting hysterical whenever Mo goes out even to school. Her behavior and personality indicates that she has not yet managed to resolve the crisis among her id, ego, and superego. She is not aware of this conflict, and might not resolve it if neither assessment nor intervention is considered. These theories of human growth and development have their strengths and weaknesses (Newman & Newman, 2012). Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of human development has a strength in the fact that it creates a broad view of human development through their lifespan. It also enables people to understand the importance of social life in the development of people, putting in mind that their lives are social in nature. This theory also creates a basis for some research, such as relating successful relationships to strong adolescent personalities (Kahn & Wright, 2013). Similarly, this theory has limitations in that it lacks the exact requirements or life tutorials that can be used to resolve the crisis in the various stages of development. It only states the stages, and the effects of succeeding or failing through each one of them without detailing the experiences or skills required to succeed. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality has the strength of creating the awareness of the existing unconscious motivation in people and its impact on the development of people (Kagitcibasi, 2007). It also explains the importance of experiences in the early stages of life on the development of a human being. The weaknesses of Freud’s theory lie in the fact that it is mostly concerned with the development of males, touching very little on the psychosexual development of females. Moreover, this theory is difficult to examine scientifically as some of the factors involved cannot be measured. Determining the relationship between adult behavior and childhood experiences is also difficult. Sometimes, there is a huge time gap between two experiences such that creating a relationship between them would not be sufficiently reliable (Rayner, 1996). Human growth and development are highly dependent on the life experiences of a child. These experiences determine the personality and behavior of the person and are crucial in the way they end up relating with other people (Milton, et. al., 2004). The family background also determines how one grows and develops. The presence of reliable parents and a good relationship between a child and their parents is a crucial determiner in the kind of personality and relationships that the child develops towards their parents and other people. The social inequality as seen between Mo and his schoolmates leads to the fights that take place in school. Feeling socially undermined, Mo resolves to act violently towards his seemingly wealthy classmates. He develops socially unacceptable behavior. The theories of human growth and development can be used to assess individuals who have conflicting personalities, as well as unacceptable ones. They can be used to identify the behaviors that have been influenced by past experiences and influences. As such, this assessment can be used to determine the failed developmental stages in individuals. Following an assessment of behavior and personalities, the theories of human growth and development can be used to identify areas of necessity in the molding of an adult (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010). Recovery and correctional therapies can be conducted through interaction with the victim. This intervention is meant to guide the involved individual along the right developmental steps to take so as to develop positively. The intervention also involves using these theories to eliminate or mitigate experiences that can negatively influence the behavior and personality of an individual. With these theories, I can assess and intervene in a similar case, as well as the case study of Mrs. Baxter and her son, to assist individuals develop the appropriate personalities. References ARCHER, J. (1992). Ethology and human development. Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf u.a. BECKETT, C. (2002). Human growth and development. London [u.a.], Sage BECKETT, C., & TAYLOR, H. (2010). Human Growth and Development. London, Sage Publications. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=743608. CARTER, N. (1980). Development, growth, and ageing. London, Croom Helm. FREUD, S. (2011). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. Cookhill, Alcester, Read Books. GREEN, L. (2010). Understanding the life course: sociological and psychological perspectives. Cambridge, Polity. KAGITCIBASI, C. (2007). 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