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Erikson's theory of psychosocial development
Erikson's theory of psychosocial development considers
Assess the relevance of culture in shaping ones own identity
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Everybody has their own identity, it is something that is specific to each individual, and describes who one is, and how they fit into society. This identity develops throughout the entirety of one’s life. Many psychologists such as Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg have created theories explaining this identity development. They divide this development into distinct stages that all people go through. One theory that is particularly effective in explaining the stages of life is the one by Erik Erikson. In his theory, Erikson states that the development of personality and identity in people is strongly influenced by the culture surrounding them. He says that people develop in eight distinct stages, spanning the entirety of their lives. In each stage, …show more content…
This novel is a series of vignettes, which tell different stories from a year of Esperanza’s life. The novel captures a major portion of Esperanza’s development. In the beginning of the novel, she is simply a little girl who enjoys playing with her little sister and her friends. Her only real desires for the future are of someday leaving Mango Street and living in a house all to her own. She does not think of herself of someone that is from Mango Street. Esperanza wants to forget about ever living on Mango Street, and never come back once she leaves. Sexually, Esperanza is not ready to emerge from childhood, where sexuality is not a problem, at the beginning of the novel. This causes her to suffer from role confusion. However, she goes through stage five of Erik Erikson’s theory of development, entitled Identity vs. Role Confusion, within the novel. This stage is all about figuring out where one fits in society, and who they want to be. This occurs both emotionally, and sexually. Emotionally, one must figure out occupationally what they want to be, and how they want to fit in with society. Sexually, one will go through changes with their body during this stage, and they must become comfortable with these changes, and learn to accept their body, (McLeod, p.4). Esperanza deals with these problems throughout the
As Esperanza develops amid the year that makes up The House on Mango Street, she encounters a progression of arousals, the most vital being a sexual arousing. Toward the start of the novel, Esperanza isn't exactly prepared to rise up out of the asexuality of youth. She is totally uninformed about sex and says that young men and young ladies live in totally extraordinary universes. She is so much a tyke that she can't address her siblings outside of the house. When she turns into a pre-adult, she starts to explore different avenues regarding the power she, as a young lady, has over men. Marin shows her principal actualities about young men, yet the primary real advance in Esperanza's consciousness of her sexuality is the point at which she and
Esperanza tries to be a good friend to Sally, but ends up appearing immature and silly. Esperanza feels shame, as she “wanted to be dead”, to “turn into the rain”, and have “my eyes melt into the ground like black snails” (Cisneros 97). With sensory-rich imagery, the author uses similes and metaphors to describe Esperanza’s feelings of utter mortification as she embarrasses herself in front of Sally. Esperanza becomes confused about her newfound sexuality and her loss of innocence when she begins acting strangely, yet awkwardly around boys. She doesn’t know whether to act like a child or an adult because although she wants to be mature and glamorous like Sally, and she gets exposed to the harsh nature of society. The disillusioned view of becoming mature and having boys notice her is especially realized by Esperanza when she gets raped at a carnival. Through detailed imagery, Cisneros describes the dirtiness of the boy, elaborating on “his dirty fingernails against my skin” and “his sour smell again” (Cisneros 100) and the confusion and anger from Esperanza. After this experience, Esperanza blames Sally instead for covering up the truth about boys and is heartbroken about the real truth of sexuality and men. It is clear that Esperanza vividly remembers this awful experience, and just reflecting on this experience causes her thoughts to
Women are seen as failure and can’t strive without men in the Mexican-American community. In this novel you can see a cultural approach which examines a particular aspect of a culture and a gender studies approach which examines how literature either perpetuates or challenges gender stereotypes. Over and over, Esperanza battled with how people perceived her and how she wished to be perceived. In the beginning of the book, Esperanza speaks of all the times her family has moved from one place to another. “Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler.
Erik Erikson was heavily influenced by Freud but while Freud was an ID psychologist, Erikson was an ego psychologist. Erikson stressed that the development of the ego depended heavily on personal and social aspects. “According to Erikson, the ego develops as it successfully resolves crises that are distinctly social in nature. These involve establishing a sense of trust in others, developing a sense of identity in society, and helping the next generation prepare for the future” (McLeod, S. 1970). His theory focused on personality development through eight distinct stages. He believed that personality progressed in a stacking or pre-determined manner, this is referred to as the epigenetic principle. One must
1. Why do many people feel bad bringing up a disease in the same room with someone having the disease? How did Esperanza feel when she did that?
Sandra Cisneros' strong cultural values greatly influence The House on Mango Street. Esperanza's life is the medium that Cisneros uses to bring the Latin community to her audience. The novel deals with the Catholic Church and its position in the Latin community. The deep family connection within the barrio also plays an important role in the novel. Esperanza's struggle to become a part of the world outside of Mango Street represents the desire many Chicanos have to grow beyond their neighborhoods.
“ The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros is a vignette talking about the experiences Esperanza had in short chapters. Esperanza is a 12 year old Mexican -American girl, so young and naive, she was so innocent, but as she grew older she began to know things of life. Her best friends are sisters, Rachel and Lucy and Marin. Marin was older than Esperanza so she knew a lot of things about boys so she is always telling Esperanza about boys. Part of the things Esperanza experienced in the story is her sexuality. Sexuality is a sense of of feeling or behaviour toward people either biologically, physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually or mentally. The author believes as people grow up they begin to have the sense of sexuality like people being attracted to the and also attracted to them.
Esperanza, a strong- willed girl who dreams big despite her surroundings and restrictions, is the main character in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Esperanza represents the females of her poor and impoverished neighborhood who wish to change and better themselves. She desires both sexuality and autonomy of marriage, hoping to break the typical life cycle of woman in her family and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, she goes through many different changes in search of identity and maturity, seeking self-reliance and interdependence, through insecure ideas such as owning her own house, instead of seeking comfort and in one’s self. Esperanza matures as she begins to see the difference. She evolves from an insecure girl to a mature young lady through her difficult life experiences and the people she comes across. It is through personal encounters and experiences that Esperanza begins to become sexually aware and acceptance her place and self-definition in her community.
Since the beginning of the book Esperanza realizes that men and women live in their own "separate worlds" and that women are basically helpless and very controlled by men in their society. The author shows the constant conflict of being a woman since most women are trapped at home not being able to go out because of their abusive husbands or are being tied down by their children. The book The House on Mango Street teaches us that roles for women are not fair. Gender roles of women do not allow women to realize their dreams and are being trapped at home watching out the window instead of realizing their potential as individuals. Women face the same problem in society every day due to the fact that men are “supposed” to be superior to women,
Many philosophers and psychologist from Jean Piaget to William James have theorized what makes a person who they are, their identity. Jean Piaget believed that the identity is formed in the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage. This means that a child is forming his identity as late to the age of seven (Schellenberg, 29) However, identity is strongly impacted by society such as school, church, government,and other institutions. Through our interactions with different situations our personality develops (Schellenberg 34). "In most situations there is a more diversified opportunity for the development of social identities, reflecting what the individual wants to put forth to define the self as well as what others want to accept,"(Schellenberg 35). Therefore, humans, much like animals, adapt to different situations based on who they are with. Individuals are always changi...
Throughout The House on Mango Street Esperanza learns to resist the gender norms that are deeply imbedded in her community. The majority of the other female characters in the novel have internalized the male viewpoint and they believe that it is their husbands or fathers responsibility to care for them and make any crucial decisions for them. However, despite the influence of other female characters that are “immasculated”, according to Judith Fetterley, Esperanza’s experiences lead her to become a “resisting reader” in Fettereley’s terminology because she does not want to become like the women that she observes, stuck under a man’s authority. She desires to leave Mango Street and have a “home of her own” so that she will never be forced to depend on a man (Cisneros 108). During the course of the novel Esperanza eventually realizes that it is also her duty to go back to Mango Street “For the ones that cannot out”, or the women who do not challenge the norms (110). Esperanza eventually turns to her writing as a way to escape from her situation without having to marry a man that she would be forced to rely on like some of her friends do.
Shedding light on the three novels we construe that Cisneros, Naipaul and Morrison have perfectly dealt with the issue of identity crisis and alienation. Esperanza along with other characters, Mr. Biswas and Pecola all suffer from identity crisis because of their societies. They are rejected and ostracized not because they want to, but because people around them undergo an inferiority complex. Their crises originate from their childhood, and though they are different they share one common feeling. On the one hand we have Esperanza and Pecola who are both young girls (coming of age) and racially segregated; one a Chicana and the other is Afro-American. They both suffer from gender and racial division. However Pecola undergoes a “triple” alienation
“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and how we grow through our life experiences. In her personal, Cisneros depicts Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age through a series of vignettes about her family, neighborhood, and personalized dreams. Although the novel does not follow a traditional chronological pattern, a story emerges, nevertheless, of Esperanza’s search to discover the meaning of her life and her personal identity. The novel begins when the Cordero family moves into a new house, the first they have ever owned, on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza is disappointed by the “small and red” house “with tight steps in front and bricks crumbling in places” (5). It is not at all the dream-house her parents had always talked about, nor is it the house on a hill that Esperanza vows to one day own for herself. Despite its location in a rough neighborhood and difficult lifestyle, Mango Street is the place with which she identifies at this time in her life.
His belief was that each human developed their own personality through a series of stages and these stages developed due to the social experiences that one experienced through life. According to Erikson, there are eight stages and each stage centers around a conflict that has to be resolved. Under Erikson’s theory, if conflict or crisis is not resolved, then the outcome will be more crisis and struggles with that issue later on in life (Domino & Affonso, 2011).
In conclusion, the formation of one’s identity has many components. Beginning at the onset of adolescence and continuing to expand, grow and form and reform as we live through the struggles or success of life. Many theorists have endeavored to clarify the development of identity formation. However, Erik Erickson offered one significant theory involving the formation of one’s identity. Expounding on Erickson theory, Marcia developed his Identity Status Model according to the existence or absence of crisis and commitments. These four statuses, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement can combine in various ways to produce a self. One’s sense of identity is determined largely by the choices and commitments made, therefore, having a well-developed sense of self can provide an individual with insight to their strengths, weaknesses, and individual uniqueness. An individual that finds themselves