Ericsons Theory Essay, Research Paper

Erik H. Erikson, just like many others, had a theory of socialization process. In his theory during a human’s life they will meet main challenges during eight points in their life.

The first stage is during infancy, from birth until about the age of eighteen months. This is the time that infants must begin to trust people, and have the feeling of being safe. As you would assume family and people that spend a lot of time with them during this time, help the infant overcome this. The next dilemma one faces comes between the ages of 18 months and three years of age. This is when they try to become in control of the actions. Between the ages of four and five kids learn to interact with their surroundings and try to meet expectations of others. This is when they begin to meet people other than their family, such as kids at school. The fourth stage, during the ages of six and thirteen, children begin to make friends and choose their social group they tend to hang out with. During the teenage years, teenagers begin to create their identity. There is great confusion during this stage. The sixth stage is when young adults begin to struggle with intimate relationships and experience the feeling of falling in love. The next challenge comes during middle adulthood. Middle-aged adults deal of trying to make differences in other people lives. Getting involved in the community is just one example. The final stage of life is when older people look back to see their accomplishments in life. They try to see if the made a difference in other peoples lives, not just their own.

Erickson’s theory may help to us to understand the social process as a whole, but it can not usually be applied to one individual life. Not everyone deals with the same problems at certain ages in their life. For example I had to deal with falling in love during my teenage years. Not during young adulthood as theorized by Erikson. Also many middle age people begin to look at their lives to see if they had made a difference, and become proud of their accomplishments, much younger than Erikson states. As you can see this is good basic theory, but it does not hold true very often.