Personal Development Paper

Personal Development Paper

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

Erikson articulated eight stages of psychosocial development through which humans should pass to adulthood from infancy. In each of these eight stages, a person confronts a different challenge and hopes to master it. The challenges faced at each stage need to be mastered otherwise they would reappear in the future as a problem. Thus, it is not necessary to master one stage in order to proceed to the next (Whitley, 2009). However, if the previous stage is not mastered, problems would arise in the current stage that may stay on for the rest of the stages. Hence, those who master each stage are the ones most likely to succeed in developing themselves fast.

The characteristic of each stage is that they help an individual to negotiate his sociocultural and biological forces. At each stage these forces conflict with each other in order resulting in challenges. In order to overcome these challenges, the individual will have to reconcile these forces. The values and virtue gained at each stage is carried forward to the next stage and these values remain with the individual for the rest of the stages (Phipps, 2011). These eight stages include infancy, early childhood, preschool, school age, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and maturity (Erikson, 2012). Each of these stages varies significant from the others. However, one thing that is common is that each stage has a difficulty that needs to be passed in order to ensure that the difficulty does not remain at the next stages.

Adolescence Stage

The adolescent stage is one in which the individual begins to make major decisions. During this stage, the individual is mainly concerned on how they appear to others. The individual feels a sense of calmness and begins to prepare for the future. The feeling of being settled sets in and the individual develops a sense of identity (Mackinnon, 2011).

This period is the transition period between childhood and adulthood. Individual ponder over their roles because they not believe that they are not a child. At the same time, they are too young to be considered to be considered an adult. This state of confusion makes them to believe in a different way and try to fit in the society. The activities and behavior at this stage also vary significantly from that of adulthood and childhood. Common activities during this stage include affiliation with various religious and political groups, baby sitting for neighbors, tinkering with cars, etc. Although at the later part of the childhood, individuals understand who they are, the stage of Adolescence is completely different (Latrobe & Drury, 2009).

The term “Identity Crisis” is used to describe this stage as the transition stage between childhood and adulthood confuses individuals as to where they fit in the society (Fee, 2013). This is considered a passage period because during this period, the identity of a person changes rapidly. The reason this period is considered a period of transition is because throughout infancy, a person wishes to be developed ...