Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson`s Eight Stages of Development

Erik Erickson began to practice psychotherapy and then eventually he supported his own views on the nature of human personality.  He contributed a lot to the psychoanalytic approach.  Erikson maintained that personality development continues throughout a person` lifetime.  

Erik Erikson developed the eight stages of development of personality.  It starts from infancy to old age.  With each different point along the way through the stages, we encounter a fork, which is two directions in which to proceed.  Erikson described the forks as turning points in personality development.  Erikson called these points crises.  it is determined that how we resolve each crisis will determine the direction of our personality development and influences how we resolve later crisis.  The stages of development starts with infancy and continues all the way up to old age.   The stage that I am in is Young adulthood.  This stage involves intimacy vs. isolation.  Men and women start searching for a special relationship to start to develop intimacy within someone and to start to grow emotionally.  Individuals who fail to develop intimacy during this stage will face emotional isolation.
          I believe that I have passed through the first couple of Erikson`s stages of development and made it to the intimacy vs. isolation stage.  I have been with my boyfriend for five almost six years now, and I feel that we are in the intimacy part of this stage.  There has been no times where we failed to develop intimacy where it would lead to emotional isolation.  However, we have had our disagreements but that hasn't meant that we went into the isolation part of the stage (Burger, 2011, p. 105-111)