Erik Erisksons Eight Stages of Personality Development

Erik Erikson was a psychoanalyst and based his work off of Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the structure and topography of personality. Unlike Freud’s idea that personality is shaped by the age of five, Erikson believed that personality continues to change over the life span. With this theory in mind, Erikson came up with a stage theory of personality development. â€Å"Stage theories assume that (1) individuals must progress through specified stages in a particular order, because each stage builds on the previous stage, (2) progress through these stages is strongly related to age, and (3) development is marked by a major discontinuities that usher in dramatic transitions in behavior† (Weiten, 2008). Erikson’s stage theory was broken down into eight stages that progressed through life. Each stage encountered a â€Å"crisis† that needed to be resolved before the person could move onto the next stage. Each stage builds upon what has gone before and carries elements of itself into future stages (Hopkins, 1995). The eight stages Erikson purposed were trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. self-absorption, and integrity vs. despair (Guinee, 1998). Stage one, trust vs. mistrust, children would ask the question whether their caregivers met their needs or not. This stage happened between birth and one year of age (Dunkel Sefcek, 2009). Maternal relationships also plays