In the psychoanalytic current you can find authors who follow Freud’s psychoanalysis budgets in an orthodox way, and others who modify these assumptions in a certain way, including Erik H. Erikson, who develops and modifies Freudian theory. Influence of society on the development of personality, not considering the family environment as unitary responsible.
Freud, in his genetic model, considered a succession of stages of life that each person would go from birth to adulthood. This succession of phases was called “phases of psychosexual development”. one of the main sources of vital energy that animates human behavior.
- This vital energy.
- Freud called it libido.
- Which must be suppressed and removed from consciousness in order not to cause any conflict.
For orthodox psychoanalysis, this sexual energy does not appear only in adolescence, as it would be present from birth, and most importantly, according to Freud, is that each phase is linked to our emotional and sexual part, so Freud developed 5 phases: oral, pálica, latent and genital.
Erikson, for his part, does not attach the same importance to psychosexual development as his predecessor, but focuses on social influence to explain the evolution of the human psyche and will therefore talk about the phases of psychosocial development.
At each stage of life there is a crisis that must be overcome by the person to move on to the next stage.
Erikson was a pioneer in considering self-development to be an ongoing process, understood development as a succession of eight phases that manifest throughout the life cycle, at each stage the individual must meet their needs, develop their skills and meet environmental conditions. requirements that are your age.
If the crises are not resolved there can not be a healthy development of the person, so it is necessary to pass a phase in order to move correctly to the next one, below are the stages of life considered by the author:
As we have just seen, Erikson intends to solve every crisis that arises at different stages of our development, solving each conflict the person will grow emotionally and psychologically, however, while it is important to resolve the conflicts that arise, it is also extremely important. developing skills that make us face these conflicts.
Acquiring such skills, through our social workers and the ability to solve all the crises that are presented, frees us from psychopathology, on the other hand, it is also important to remember that if we do not succeed, we run the risk of getting caught up in one of them. which will not allow us to move forward.
When we acquire the necessary skills, we experience a rewarding sense of dominance, called ego strength.