Erik Erikson's Human Developmental Theory

649 Words2 Pages

Out of the massive contributions made to developmental psychology, no psychologist had made a more significant contribution than Erik Erikson. As a young man, Erikson was highly influenced by the Freud family and their school of thought. However, Erikson disagreed with the Freudian concept of psychosexual stages, the idea that humans undergo stages of development and resolve basic conflicts by physical and pleasurable gratification (Santrock, 22). “According to Freud, the primary motivation for human behavior is sexual in nature according to Erikson, it is social and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people,” (Santrock, 23). Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory is a well rounded view of life- span development, it incorporates important conflicts during each stage of development that most people can relate to and apply to their own development. Erikson’s theory has eight stages of development and a corresponding age range for each stage. The first stage is known as trust versus mistrust, which occurs from birth to a child’s first year, during this stage the infant learns that he o...

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