Erik Erikson And An Eleven Year Old Boy
...in a certain order, which nature, through its genetics, has determined. If we interfere in the natural order of development by pulling a petal forward prematurely or out of order, we ruin the development of the entire flower” (Boeree, 2003).
I will observe an eleven year old boy using Erik Erikson’s psychosocial developmental theory. Erik Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist who believed that some of Freud’s theories were correct. Erikson expanded Freud's genital stage into adolescence plus three stages of adulthood (Boeree, 2003). He is known for his work in refining and expanding Freud's theories of stages. Development, he says, functions by the epigenetic principle (Boeree, 2003). This principle states that each stage has a central task, and if it is not fulfilled at the proper stages in which they are supposed to take place, then the person develops too little of a negative or positive influence or too much of a positive or negative influence. (Example: trusting too much or too little). Just as the quote above about a rose bud written by C. George Boeree says, if we don’t experience each stage of Erikson’s stages of development at the time that it was supposed to take place, the unfortunate result is that the entire flow of personal development is ruined or delayed. Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory consists of eight stages that take place from birth until death, but I only emphasize about the first four stages in my theory to analyze if the eleven year old boy whom I will interview, is at the appropriate psychosocial developmental stage of Erikson’s theory.
The first of the eight stages developed was the psychosocial crisis, Trust vs. Mistrust, which occurs from birth to the age of eighteen months (Boeree, 2003). If during that age the child receives proper care, the result is the maturation of sensory, perceptual, motor...
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