Introduction
Erikson’s theory of development describes eight stages which occur at a certain time of life (from infancy to old age) and are associated with specific developmental crises and tasks (Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986; Malone, Liu, Vaillant, Rentz, & Waldinger, 2016). Erikson viewed the ability to meet these tasks and resolve these crises as important for one’s identity formation and mental health (Malone et al., 2016). Today, the theory is used as a framework for the development of humans (Knight, 2017; Malone et al., 2016). Furthermore, it has been employed to customize therapy (Marcia & Josselson, 2013). Therefore, I can apply it to my personal experience and reflect on my identity formation.
The Relation of the Theory to the First Four Stages of my Life
When using Erikson’s theory of development, it may be necessary to review the prior stages since they can affect each subsequent one. The first stage of development is infancy, in which children are balancing the feeling of trust and mistrust (Kalat, 2013; Malone et al., 2016). As I still struggle when establishing social relations, I believe that at that point, I was not successful in developing trust. The second stage is early childhood, and its critical conflict is autonomy versus shame and doubt (Malone et al., 2016). I think that I was successful there and developed a sense of control over my abilities because I have not experienced any issues with autonomy in my adolescent life.
The third stage is the preschool age, during which the sense of initiative or guilt is formed (Kalat, 2013). I have struggled with a sense of guilt over my decisions in adolescence, which makes me think that I was not successful then. The fourth stage is referred to as the school age. During it, the sense of industry or inferiority is established (Kalat, 2013). I believe that I have developed a sense of inferiority due to my academic struggles, which resulted in doubts and problems with decision-making. With the mentioned successes and failures, I entered the fifth stage: my adolescence.
My Personal Development of Adolescent Characteristics
According to Erikson, the fifth stage involves the task of acquiring one’s identity, which can either be a success or lead to role confusion (Malone et al., 2016). I believe I made some progress in my identity formation during adolescence. For example, I developed a relatively good understanding of my character. The five positive characteristics I have are honesty, loyalty, compassion, preference, and fairness. I became aware of my positive features mainly when learning how to cope with difficulties because thinking of the good traits helped my self-esteem and confidence. I believe that good characteristics balance out the negative ones, which aids me in focusing on the good side of my character and develop it. It is the primary way for me to overcome the negative aspects of my personality: I compensate them with what is good about me.
The five negative features that I have are messiness, shyness, criticism, thin skin and laziness. I have been aware of the messiness, shyness, and laziness since I was a child due to the remarks from my friends and family. The criticism and the thin skin aspects became evident to me in my adolescence when I was looking for an explanation of my issues with establishing social relationships. Thus, I experienced a growing understanding of my identity in my youth.
My concerns during early adolescence were connected to fitting with the rest of my environment. During my middle adolescence, I was worried about what I wanted to do in life. During my late adolescence, I was focused on understanding myself and my personality better. In the first two stages, I could not figure out how to deal with my issues, and the only tool that I used to address them was self-reflection. Consequently, they led me to the point where I wanted to understand myself better. I think that the latter stage was the key to dealing with the mentioned problems, and it is also directly connected to the typical adolescence crisis described by Erikson.
The event that marked a positive turning point in my life and had a profound influence on my personality was the change in my relationships with parents. During my middle adolescence, we had a lot of issues with communication. I think that the lack of trust between us at the time could be traced back to my infancy stage. However, by the end of my adolescence, I decided that I needed to understand myself better to be able to build good relationships with people. Looking back, I think that the hard time in my life pushed me towards becoming more mature, and I do not feel too bad about it.
I believe that my relationships with peers were not healthy for the most of my childhood and early adolescent life. As for other connections, I had some problems with the teachers who I viewed as excessively strict. I did not have any romantic interests, but I was not worried about it; my main concern was the problems with making friends. My thin skin was also contributing to the issue because I could be offended by any minor remark. I think that the mentioned difficulties can be traced back to my sense of inferiority which was developed during school age; problematic relationships also enhanced the feeling and made my life rather miserable. However, by the middle of my adolescence, I was learning to understand my issues and work on my negative traits, which helped me connect later in life.
My relationship with my parents was complicated during my childhood and middle youth because of the misunderstandings between us. This problem was resolved over the course of my adolescence as I became more aware of the issue and started working on it. The positive aspect of our relationship is the feeling that we will support each other because we are a family. It is a sense I had even at the times when our relationship was in bad stages.
Conclusion
The application of Erikson’s theory to my personal development can yield the following conclusions. I did not always manage to resolve the crises of different developmental stages, which affected my subsequent identity formation in a way that can be perceived as negative. However, during adolescence, my progress towards understanding my identity helped me to resolve some of the issues that followed from prior stages. Self-reflection was my main concern at the time, but it also was a tool, and it helped me to improve my ability to connect with other people.
References
Erikson, E., Erikson, J., & Kivnick, H. (1986). Vital involvement in old age. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Kalat, J. W. (2013). Introduction to psychology (9th ed.). New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Knight, Z. (2017). A proposed model of psychodynamic psychotherapy linked to Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 24(5), 1047-1058.
Malone, J., Liu, S., Vaillant, G., Rentz, D., & Waldinger, R. (2016). Midlife Eriksonian psychosocial development: Setting the stage for late-life cognitive and emotional health. Developmental Psychology, 52(3), 496-508.
Marcia, J., & Josselson, R. (2013). Eriksonian personality research and its implications for psychotherapy. Journal of Personality, 81(6), 617-629.