Erikson’s Stages or Crises and Associated Outcomes

Stage Age Successful resolution Unsuccessful

resolution
leads to leads
to___

I. Trust vs. mistrust birth – 1 Hope Fear

(oral)*
II. Autonomy vs. shame 1 – 3 Will power Self-
doubt
(anal)
III. Initiative vs. guilt 4–5 Purpose
Unworthiness
(phallic)
IV. Industry vs. inferiority 6 – 11 Competency Incompetency
(latency)
V. Ego identity vs. role 12 – 20 Fidelity
Uncertainty
Confusion
VI. Intimacy vs. isolation 20 – 24 Love Promiscuity
VII. Generativity vs. 25 – 65 Care Selfishness
Stagnation
VIII. Ego integrity vs. 65 – death Wisdom
Meaningless
Despair and
despair

*roughly corresponds to Freudian stage

- Erik Erickson emphasized the role of the ego along with the development
throughout the life cycle.

Kohut’s Self-Psychology
The development of an integrated sense of self.
- allows for a life that has direction and meaning.
- Children search for recognition, approval and admiration

Psychodynamics: The Source of Information

- to view patient behavior and its meaning in characteristic ways.

Patient Behavior
- It is not the fact of observation that differentiates clinicians so much as it is
how observation is used and what it is presumed to signify about the nature of
the patient’s problems. However, one must recall that choosing observations
to single out is very much a function of one’s theory or viewpoint.
Case History Data
- The key to understanding the patient’s present problems clearly lies in the
past – a past in which the unconscious forces now affecting the patient were
shaped.
Assessment Procedures
- One tries to help the person to reveal unconscious motives, conflicts and
other dynamics. In this approach, the objective is to uncover disguised
defenses, to read the symbolic meaning of behaviors, and to find the
unconscious motives that underline actions.
 Phenomenological theory
- many varieties of the general phenomenological approach
- For the phenomenologist the basic postulate is that all behavior is determined
by the phenomenological field, which is everything experienced by the person
at a given moment.
- Cognitive structures referred to as self-schemas
- These cognitive generalizations about the self that organize and guide the
processing of self-related information. In particular, self-schemas heighten our
sensitivity to self-related material.
- THREE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES: self-theory of Carl Rogers, the
personal construct theory of George Kelly, and the several aspects of the
existential and gestalt movements.

Roger’s Self Theory: A Brief Review

- the central idea is that the person’s perception of the world is the core
determinant of behavior.
- Experience is referred to as the person’s phenomenal field , which is the
entire panorama of the person’s consciousness at a given moment.
- Self-actualization is an inborn quality that operates to move all living things
forward
- Perception is thus selective, and that selectivity operates in the service of
consistency
- It is clear that in Roger’s theory the subjective experience of the individual
takes precedence over stimuli or environmental conditions.

Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory: A Brief Review

- We seek to anticipate events so that we can better represent the future; and
through our capacity to anticipate we achieve control
- Kelly stated that each person develops a construct system that incorporates
ordinal relationships between constructs.

The Existential View: Some Key Concepts

- Binswanger and Boss are the most representative of the existentialist who
applied existentialism to personality and psychotherapy
- One of the basic existentialist concepts is Dasein, which refers to being-in-the
world, or one’s existence.
- This defines the significance of the individual, who strives to transcend the
limits of the world and achieve full potential in a free and choosing fashion.
- A person who makes choices wisely will avoid the anxieties, pathology, and
alienation so typical of many of us.
- The environment places inhibitory burdens on our potential for making wise
choices and thereby sets limits on our achievement.
- Psychosis is a total retreat into fantasy – it achieves a new form of Dasein.
Thus, it has been stated that “no psychopathological symptom will ever be
fully and adequately understood unless it is conceived of as a disturbance in
the texture of the social relationship of which a given human existence
fundamentally consists, and that all psychiatric diagnoses are basically only
sociological statements.”

The Gestalt Movement

- a basic element in the gestalt view emphasizes that the person is an
organized whole and must reach an awareness of the true self.
- The person must devote careful attention to self-defeating actions and
feelings.
- Also crucial is an awareness of the “now.”
- The answer to our problem resides in today, in this moment, not in analytic
ruminations over the past.
- Neurosis is a kind of stagnation of a psychological growth. The person’s efforts
to achieve self-actualization have been interrupted by a conflict between
individuals needs and demands of society.

Behavior Theory
- it is represented by a broad band of techniques and commitments to theory.
The Basic Concepts of Behavior Theory
- Personality is “nothing more than the sum total of the individual’s behavior.”
- The behavioral orientation is based primarily upon the classical conditioning
work of Pavlov and Hull and on the operant conditioning of Skinner.
- From classical conditioning we have all learned that stimuli associated with
unconditioned reinforcement begin to develop reinforcing properties of their
own, particularly if the pairing of a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned
stimulus is frequent and the interval between these stimuli is optimal. By such
an arrangement, we learn to prefer or to approach certain previously neutral
stimuli, or by the same token we learn to avoid certain stimuli that are
associated with an aversive outcome.
- The operant approach is characterized by the view that behavior is
maintained by its consequences.

Behavior Theory: the sources of information

- The Interview
- The Case History
- Observation
- Tests