The Ego in Post-Freudinan Theory

- our ego is a positive force that creates a selfidentity,

a sense of “I.”

-center of our personality

- helps us adapt to the various conflicts and crises of life and keeps us from losing our individuality
to the leveling forces of society.

- During childhood, the ego is weak, pliable, and fragile

- adolescence it should begin to take form and gain strength
- as a partially
unconscious organizing agency that synthesizes our present experiences with
past self-identities and also with anticipated images of self.
-three interrelated aspects of ego
- body ego refers to experiences with our body; a way
of seeing our physical self as different for other people. We may be satisfied or dissatisfied
with the way our body looks and functions, but we recognize that it is the only body we will ever
have.
- ego ideal represents the image we have of ourselves in comparison with an established ideal; it is
responsible for our being satisfied or dissatisfied not only with our physical self but with our entire
personal identity.
- Ego identity is the image we have of ourselves in the variety of social roles we play.

Society's Influences
- Different societies, with their variations in child-rearing practices, tend to shape personalities that
fit the needs and values of their culture.
- prolonged and permissive nursing of infants
resulted in what Freud would call “oral”
personalities: that is, people who gain great pleasure through functions of the mouth.
-orality and anality are often considered undesirable traits or neurotic symptoms. Erikson (1963),
however, argued that orality among the Sioux hunters and anality among the Yurok fishermen are
adaptive characteristics that help both the individual and the culture.
-The United States developed Pseudospecies
- Pseudospecies- that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated by a particular society that it is
somehow chosen to be the human species.

Epigenetic Principle
- term borrowed from embryology.
- it develops, or should develop, according to a predetermined rate and in a fixed sequence.
-the ego follows the path of epigenetic development, with each stage developing at its proper time.
- “anything that grows has a ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts arise, each part
having its time of special ascendancy, until all parts have arisen to form a functioning whole”
-“Epigenesis means that one characteristic develops on top of another in space and time”
 Stages of Psychosocial Development
1st - Growth takes place according to the epigenetic
principle. That is, one component part arises out of another and has its own
time of ascendancy, but it does not entirely replace earlier components.
2nd- in every stage of life there is an interaction of opposites—that is, a conflict
between a syntonic (harmonious) element and a dystonic (disruptive) element.
-> basic trust (a syntonic tendency) is opposed to basic mistrust (a dystonic tendency)
- people must have both harmonious (syntonic) and disruptive (dystonic) experiences.
3rd- the conflict between the dystonic and syntonic elements produces an ego quality or ego
strength, which Erikson referred to as a basic strength. antithesis between trust and mistrust
emerges hope, an ego quality that allows an infant to move into the next stage.
- clash between the harmonious and the disruptive elements of that stage.
4th- too little basic strength at any one stage results in a core pathology for that stage. example:
insufficient hope leads to withdrawal, a core pathology
5th- he never lost sight of the biological aspect of human development.
6th- events in earlier stages do not cause later personality development. Ego
identity is shaped by a multiplicity of conflicts and event
7th- personality development is characterized by an identity crisis, an identity crisis is not a
catastrophic event but rather an opportunity for either adaptive
or maladaptive adjustment.
8th- The “vs.” separating syntonic and dystonic elements signifies not only an antithetical
relationship but also a complementary one.
Infancy
-a period encompassing approximately the first year of life and paralleling Freud’s oral phase of
development.
-is a time of incorporation, with infants “taking in” not only through their mouth but through their
various sense organs as well.
- marked by the oral-sensory psychosexual mode, the psychosocial crisis of basic trust versus basic
mistrust, and the basic strength of hope.
Oral-Sensory Mode
- a phrase that includes infants’ principal psychosexual mode of adapting.
-is characterized by two modes of incorporation—receiving and accepting what
is given.
-The second mode of incorporation, however, implies a social context.
- interpersonal relations helps them learn to eventually become givers.
- they learn to trust or mistrust other people, thus setting up the basic psychosocial crisis of infancy,
namely, basic trust versus basic mistrust.
Basic Trust Versus Basic Mistrust (Hope)
- If they realize that their mother will provide food regularly, then they begin to learn basic trust; if
they consistently hear the pleasant, rhythmic voice of their mother, then they develop more basic
trust; if they can rely on an exciting visual environment, then they solidify basic trust even more.
-In contrast, they learn basic mistrust if they find no correspondence
between their oral-sensory needs and their environment.
-Basic trust is ordinarily syntonic, and basic mistrust, dystonic. Nevertheless,
infants must develop both attitudes.
- Both trust and mistrust are inevitable experiences of infants. All babies who
have survived have been fed and otherwise cared for and therefore have some reason
to trust. In addition, all have been frustrated by pain, hunger, or discomfort, and thus
have a reason to mistrust.
-inevitable clash between basic trust and basic mistrust results in people’s
first psychosocial
Hope: The Basic Strength of Infancy
- emerges from the conflict between basic trust and basic mistrust. Without the
antithetical relationship between trust and mistrust, people cannot develop hope.
- If infants do not develop sufficient hope during infancy, they will demonstrate
the antithesis or the opposite of hope—withdrawal, the core pathology of infancy.
Early Childhood
- a period paralleling Freud’s anal stage and encompassing approximately the 2nd and 3rd years of
life.
- Erikson took a broader view. To him, young children receive pleasure not only from mastering the
sphincter muscle but also from mastering other body functions such as urinating, walking, throwing,
holding, and so on.
- children develop a sense of control over their interpersonal environment, as well as
a measure of self-control.
- also a time of experiencing
doubt and shame as children learn that many of their attempts at autonomy are unsuccessful.
Anal-Urethral-Muscular Mode
- children learn to control their body, especially
in relation to cleanliness and mobility.
-also a time of learning to walk, run, hug parents, and hold on to toys
and other objects.
-They may retain their feces or eliminate them at will,
snuggle up to their mother or suddenly push her away, delight in hoarding objects or
ruthlessly discard them.
-a time of contradiction, a time of stubborn rebellion and
meek compliance, a time of impulsive self-expression and compulsive deviance, a
time of loving cooperation and hateful resistance.

Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt

- Children stubbornly express their anal-urethral-muscular
mode, they are likely to find a culture that attempts to inhibit some of their selfexpression.
-Instill doubt by questioning their children’s ability
to meet their standards. The conflict between autonomy and shame and doubt becomes
the major psychosocial crisis of early childhood.
-Children should develop a proper ratio between autonomy and shame
and doubt, and the ratio should be in favor of autonomy, the syntonic quality of early
childhood.
-Too little autonomy will have difficulties in subsequent
stages, lacking the basic strengths of later stages
-Grows out of basic trust; and if basic trust has been established in infancy, then
children learn to have faith in themselves, and their world remains intact while they
experience a mild psychosocial crisis.
- Shame is a feeling of selfconsciousness, of being looked at and exposed.
-,Doubt the feeling that something remains hidden and cannot be
seen.
-Both shame and doubt are dystonic qualities, and both grow out of the basic
mistrust that was established in infancy.
Will: The Basic Strength of Early Childhood
- step is the beginning of free will and willpower—but only a beginning.
-a significant measure of free will are reserved for later stages of development, but they originate in
the rudimentary will that emerges during early childhood.
- Toilet training often epitomizes the conflict of wills between adult and child, but willful
expression is not limited to this area.
- Inadequate will is expressed as compulsion, the core
pathology of early childhood. Too little will and too much compulsivity carry forward
into the play age as lack of purpose and into the school age as lack of confidence.
Play Age
- a period covering the same time as Freud’s phallic phase—roughly ages 3 to 5 years.
- Erikson believed that the Oedipus complex is but one of several important developments during
the play age.
-developing locomotion, language skills, curiosity, imagination, and the ability to set goals.
Genital-Locomotor Mode
The primary psychosexual mode during the play age is genital-locomotor
play is an expression not only of the
genital mode but also of the child’s rapidly developing locomotor abilities.
The interest that play-age children have in genital activity is accompanied by
their increasing facility at locomotion. They can now move with ease, running, jumping,
and climbing with no conscious effort; and their play shows both initiative and
imagination.
Initiative Versus Guilt
children begin to move around more easily and vigorously and as their genital interest
awakens
an intrusive head-on mode of approaching the world.
The consequence of these taboo and inhibited goals is guilt. The
conflict between initiative and guilt becomes the dominant psychosocial crisis of the
play age.
the ratio between these two should favor the syntonic quality—initiative.
Unbridled initiative may lead to chaos and a lack of moral principles.
if guilt is the dominant element, children may become compulsively
moralistic or overly inhibited
Inhibition, which is the antipathy of purpose, constitutes the core pathology of the play age.
Purpose: The Basic Strength of the Play Age
conflict of initiative versus guilt produces the basic strength of purpose.
play with a purpose, competing at games in order to win or to be on top.
They set goals and pursue them with purpose. Play age is also
the stage in which children are developing a conscience and beginning to attach labels
such as right and wrong to their behavior.
cornerstone of morality
School Age
covers development from about age 6 to approximatelyage 12 or 13 and matches the latency years
of Freud’s theory.
social world of children is expanding beyond family to include peers, teachers, and other adult
models.
wish to know becomes strong and is tied to their basic striving for competence.
children striveindustriously to read and write, to hunt and fish, or to learn the skills required by their
culture.
Latency
allows children to divert their energies to learning the technology of their culture and the strategies
of their social interactions.
begin to form a picture of themselves as competent or incompetent.
the origin of ego identity
evolves more fully during adolescence.
Industry Versus Inferiority
- time of tremendous social growth.
- Industry, a syntonic quality, means industriousness, a willingness to remain busy with something
and to finish a job.
- children learn to work and play at activities directed toward acquiring job skills and toward
learning the rules of cooperation.
- they develop a sense of industry if their work is insufficient
- they acquire a sense of inferiority—the dystonic quality of the school age.
-if children acquire too much guilt and too little purpose during the play age, they will likely feel
inferior and incompetent during the school age.
- The ratio between industry and inferiority should, of course, favor industry
- As Alfred Adler (Chapter 3) pointed out, inferiority can serve as an impetus to do one’s best.
Conversely, an oversupply of inferiority can block productive activity and stunt one’s feelings of
competence.
Competence: The Basic Strength of the School Age
- develop the basic strength of competence:
-the confidence to use one’s physical and cognitive
abilities to solve the problems that accompany school age.
-foundation for “co-operative participation in productive adult life”
- If the struggle favors either inferiority or an overabundance of industry, children are likely to give
up and regress to an earlier stage of development.
- preoccupied with infantile genital and Oedipal fantasies and spend most of their time in
nonproductive play.
- regression is called inertia, the antithesis of competence and the core pathology of the
school age.
Adolescence
- the period from puberty to young adulthood,one of the most crucial
developmental stages
-a person must gain a firm sense of ego identity.
- neither begins nor ends during adolescence, the crisis between identity and identity confusion
reaches its ascendance during this stage.
- fidelity, the basic strength of adolescence.
-a period of social latency,
- a time of sexual latency
- adolescents are developing sexually and cognitively
- Adolescence, then, is an adaptive phase of personality development, a period of trial and error.
Puberty
-genital maturation
-plays a relatively minor role in Erikson’s concept of adolescence.
- puberty is important psychologically because it triggers expectations of adult roles yet ahead—
roles that are essentially social and can be filled only through a struggle to attain ego identity.
Identity Versus Identity Confusion
- ego identity reaches a climax during adolescence as young people strive to find out who they are
and who they are not.
- identity strengthens into a crisis as young people learn to cope with the psychosocial conflict of
identity versus identity confusion.
- crisis should not suggest a threat or catastrophe but rather “a turning point, a crucial period of
increased vulnerability and heightened potential”
-identity emerges from two sources
(1)adolescents’affirmation or repudiation of childhood identifications
(2) their historical and social contexts, which encourage conformity to certain standards.
Young people frequently reject the standards of their elders, preferring instead the values of a peer
group or gang.
- Identity is defined both positively and negatively, as adolescents are deciding what they want to
become and what they believe
- discovering what they do not wish to be and what they do not believe.
- either repudiate the values of parents or reject those of the peer group, a dilemma that may
intensify their identity confusion.
-Identity confusion is a syndrome of problems that includes a divided selfimage,
an inability to establish intimacy, a sense of time urgency, a lack of concentration
on required tasks, and a rejection of family or community standards.
- Erikson set about searching for a different style of life. Gifted at sketching and with more identity
confusion than identity, he spent the next 7 years wandering through southern Europe in search of
an identity as an artist.
- time of discontent, rebellion, and identity confusion.
- identity confusion is a necessary part of our search for identity, too much confusion can lead to
pathological adjustment in the form of regression to earlier stages of development.
- if we develop the proper ratio of identity to identity confusion, we will have:
(1) faith in some sort of ideological principle
(2) the ability to freely decide how we should behave,
(3) trust in our peers and adults who give us advice regarding goals and aspirations, and (4)
confidence in our choice of an eventual occupation.
Fidelity: The Basic Strength of Adolescence
- The basic strength emerging from adolescent identity crises is fidelity, or faith in
one’s ideology.
- The trust learned in infancy is basic for fidelity in adolescence. Young people
must learn to trust others before they can have faith in their own view of the future.
developed hope during infancy, and they must follow hope with the
other basic strengths—will, purpose, and competence. Each is a prerequisite for fidelity,
just as fidelity is essential for acquiring subsequent ego strengths.
- pathological counterpart of fidelity is role repudiation
- Role Repudiation- the core pathology of adolescence that blocks one’s ability to synthesize
various self-images and values into a workable identity.
-> can take the form of either diffidence or defiance
- Diffidence- is an extreme lack of self-trust or selfconfidence and is expressed as shyness or
hesitancy to express oneself. In contrast, defiance is the act of rebelling against authority.
Young Adulthood (19-30)
- people must acquire the ability to fuse that identity with the identity of another person while
maintaining their sense of individuality.
- young adulthood may continue for several decades.
- should develop mature genitality, experience the conflict between intimacy and isolation, and
acquire the basic strength of love.
Genitality
- genitality can develop only during young adulthood when it is distinguished by mutual trust and a
stable sharing of sexual satisfactions with a loved person.
Intimacy Versus Isolation
-The ability to fuse one’s identity with that of another person without fear of losing it.
-Can be achieved only after people have formed a stable ego, the infatuations often found in young
adolescents are not true intimacy.
- Unsure of their identity may either shy away from psychosocial intimacy or desperately seek
intimacy through meaningless sexual encounters.
- mature intimacy means an ability and willingness to share a mutual trust. It involves sacrifice,
compromise, and commitment within a relationship of two equals. It should be a requirement for
marriage.
- Isolation, defined as “the incapacity to take chances with one’s identity by sharing true intimacy”
- Some people become financially or socially successful, yet retain a sense of
isolation because they are unable to accept the adult responsibilities of productive
work, procreation, and mature love.
-is essential before one can acquire mature love.
-Too much togetherness can diminish a person’s sense of ego identity, which leads that person to a
psychosocial regression and an inability to face the next developmental
stage.
-too much isolation, too little intimacy, and a deficiency in the basic strength of love.
Love: The Basic Strength of Young Adulthood
-the basic strength of young adulthood, emerges from the crisis of intimacy versus
isolation.
-as mature devotion that overcomes basic differences between men and women.
- includes intimacy, it also contains some degree of isolation,
-each partner is permitted to retain a separate identity. Mature love means commitment, sexual
passion, cooperation, competition, and friendship.
-basic strength of young adulthood, enabling a person to cope productively with the final two stages
of development.
- Exclusivity, the core pathology of young adulthood. that is, a person must be able
to exclude certain people, activities, and ideas in order to develop a strong sense of
identity.
-Pathological when it blocks one’s ability to cooperate, compete, or compromise—all prerequisite
ingredients for intimacy and love
Adulthood
-that time when people begin to take their place in society and assume responsibility for whatever
society produces.
-31 to 60.
- characterized by the psychosexual mode of procreativity, the psychosocial crisis of generativity
versus stagnation, and the basic strength of care
Procreativity
-refers to more than genital contact with an intimate partner.
- assuming responsibility for the care of offspring that result from that sexual contact.
Ideally, procreation should follow from the mature intimacy and love established
during the preceding stage.
- In addition, it encompasses
working productively to transmit culture from one generation to the next.
Generativity Versus Stagnation
-generativity- the generation of new beings as well as new products and new ideas
is concerned with establishing and guiding the next generation, includes the procreation of children,
the production of work, and the creation of new things and
ideas that contribute to the building of a better world.
-grows out of earlier syntonic qualities such as intimacy and identity.
- During adulthood, one-to-one intimacy is no longer enough. Other people, especially
children, become part of one’s concern. Instructing others in the ways of culture is a practice found
in all societies.
-The antithesis of generativity is self-absorption and stagnation
-productivity and creativity is crippled when people become too absorbed in themselves, too self-
indulgent.
- Some elements of stagnation and self-absorption, however, are necessary.
Care: The Basic Strength of Adulthood
-“a widening commitment to take care of the persons, the products, and the ideas one has learned to
care for”
-arises from each earlier basic ego strength. One must have hope, will, purpose, competence,
fidelity, and love in order to take care of that which one cares for.
- Not a duty or obligation but a natural desire emerging from the conflict between generativity and
stagnation or self-absorption.
-Antipathy of care is rejectivity, the core pathology of adulthood.
-the unwillingness to take care of certain persons or groups manifested as self-centeredness,
provincialism, or pseudospeciation: that is, the belief that other groups of people are inferior to
one’s own. It is responsible for much of human hatred, destruction, atrocities, and wars.
Old Age
- 40s to 60s to end of life.
- Are no longer generative
- A time for joy, playfulness and wonder
- May also be a time of senility, depression and despair.

Generalized Sensuality
-to take pleasure in a variety of different physical sensations—sights, sounds, tastes, odors,
embraces, and perhaps genital stimulation.
- A greater appreciation for the traditional lifestyle of the opposite sex. Men become more nurturant
and more acceptant of the pleasures of nonsexual relationships, including those with their
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Women become more interested and involved in politics,
finance, and world affairs.
- dependent on one’s ability to hold things together, that is, to maintain integrity in the face of
despair.

Integrity Versus Despair

- the dystonic quality of despair may prevail, but for people with a strong ego identity who
have learned intimacy and who have taken care of both people and things, the syntonic
quality of integrity will predominate.
- Integrity a feeling of wholeness and coherence, an ability to hold together one’s sense of “I-
ness” despite diminishing physical and intellectual powers.
- Ego integrity is sometimes difficult to maintain when people see that they are losing
familiar aspects of their existence
- Despair- literally means to be without hope, the last dystonic quality of the life cycle is in
the opposite corner from hope, a person’s first basic strength
- Once hope is lost, despair follows and life ceases to have meaning
Wisdom: The Basic Strength of Old Age
- informed and detached concern with life itself in the face of death itself ”
- Detached concern do not lack concern; rather, they exhibit an active but dispassionate
interest.
- With mature wisdom, they maintain their integrity in spite of declining physical and mental
abilities. Wisdom draws from and contributes to the traditional knowledge passed from
generation to generation.
- concerned with ultimate issues, including nonexistence
- the core pathology of old age is disdain, reaction to feeling (and seeing others) in an
increasing state of being finished, confused, helpless
- a continuation of rejectivity, the core pathology of adulthood.
- a period of very old age when physical and mental infirmities rob people of their generative
abilities and reduce them to waiting for death.