ugh 40 young adults struggle to form close relationships and to gain capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated. The seventh stage is called middle adulthood (generativity vs. stagnation) during the ages of 41 through about 60 the middle-aged discover a sense of contributing to the world, such as through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose. During late adulthood ages 60 and up, (integrity vs. despair) during this stage when reflecting on his or her life, the older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure. According to Dr. C. George Boeree “Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist. This means that he accepts Freud’s ideas as basically correct, including the more debatable ideas such as the Oedipal complex, and accepts as well the ideas about the ego that were added by other Freudian loyalist such as Heinz Hartmann and, of course, Anna Freud. However, Erikson is much more society and culture- oriented than most Freudians, as you might except from someone with his anthropological interest, and he often pushes the instincts and the unconscious practically out of the picture. Perhaps because of this, Erikson is popular among Freudians and non-Freudians alike.” “According to Erikson, personality develops in steps determined by human organism’s readiness to move toward, to be aware of, and to interact with a widening social world – a world that begins with a dim image of mother and ends with an image of humankind.” Erikson’s stages are very interesting; stages five and six are going to be describe in detail in my paper. Stage five is adolescence, beginning with puberty and ending around 18 or 20 years old. The task during adolescence is to achieve ego identity and avoid role confusion. It was adolescence that interested Erikson first and most, and the patterns he saw here were the bases for his thinking about all the other stages. Ego identity ...
