Erik Erikson

Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human Development – A lifetime Refection

As I began to write this paper after reflecting on Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages, I began to see my life to this point as a journey of growth and discovery. A journey that is crucial in the development of who I am personally, but also how I have been formed to fit into my particular socio-economic environment. Erikson’s developmental model really makes sense to me, as it seems to bring Freud’s model into modern times, making practical use of theory.

As we re-wind back to the first 0 to 12 months of my life, I was told that I was able to the first of Erikson’s psychosocial stages adequately, even though I was born premature and did not come home for the first five weeks of life. My mother, after I came home, supplied me with all the needed necessities of life, such as food, warmth, and the comfort of physical closeness which is so important for a premature infant. This allowed me to understand the world around me and accept that material objects and people exist even though I could not see them. This was a very important stepping stone, in which where the foundation for trust became a part of me. In the next period of my young life, from about 1 to 2 years of age, I was able to resolve the second of Erikson’s psychosocial stages with some interesting results. It was around this time that I began to assume important responsibilities for my own self-care like feeding myself, using the toilet on my own, and dressing myself. The one catch was that at this time I also began to struggle with the issue of wetting my bed. This brought a lot of shame and doubt into my life at that point, and began a pattern that sometimes contained polar opposites. It was during this time also that I began learning the physical skills that would help form who I was to become, including experiments in walking and grasping for objects and people. As I learned that I could control my own body and its functions, I...