disdain.
Because our society is more
DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
THE DEVELOPING PERSONALITY
For Freud, development means moving
through five instinctive stages of life, each
of which he assigns to a specific age range.
Each stage is discrete from the others and
has a major function, which is based on a
pleasure center. Unless this pleasure center
is stimulated appropriately (not too much,
not too little), the person becomes fixated
(remains at that stage) and is unable to
become a fully mature person.
FIVE PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
1. THE ORAL STAGE (0 - 1 ½ years old)
The oral cavity (mouth, lips, tongue, gums)
is the pleasure center. Its function is to
obtain an appropriate amount of sucking,
eating, biting, and talking.
2. THE ANAL STAGE (1 ½ - 3 years old)
The anus is the pleasure center. The
function here is successful toilet training.
3. THE PHALLIC STAGE (3 – 5 years old)
The glans of the penis and the clitoris are
the pleasure centers in this stage and in the
2 remaining stages. The major function of
this stage is the healthy development of
sexual interest, which is achieved by
masturbation and unconscious sexual
desire for the parent of the opposite sex.
Resolution of the conflicts caused by this
desire (called the Oedipal conflict in males
and the Electra conflict in females) is the
goal.
4. THE LATENCY STAGE (5 – 12 years old)
During this stage, sexual desire becomes
dormant, which is especially true for males
through the defense mechanism of
introjection. Boys refuse to kiss or hug their
mothers and treat female age-mates with
tolerant of the daughter’s attraction to her
father, the Electra complex is less resolved
and girls’ sexual feelings may be less
repressed during this stage.
5. THE GENITAL STAGE (12+ years old)
At this stage a surge of sexual hormones
occurs in both genders, which brings about
an unconscious recurrence of the phallic
stage. Normally, however, youths have
learned that.
THE PSYCHOSOCIAL CRISES APPROACH
Influenced by Freud, but searching for a
different perspective, Erik Erikson, the chief
proponent of a psychosocial theory of
development (as opposed to Freud’s
psychosexual) wrote Childhood and Society
(1963), a perceptive and at times poetic
description of human life.
Erikson’s view of human development
flowed from his extensive study of people
living in an impressive variety of cultures:
Germans, East Indians, the Sioux of South
Dakota, the Yuroks of California, and
wealthy adolescents in the northeastern
United States. His idea also stems from
intensive studies of historical figures such
as Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi,
which led him to see human development
as the interaction between genes and the
environment.
According to Erikson, human life progresses
through a series of eight stages. Each of
these stages is marked by a crisis that
needs to be resolved so that the individual
can move on. Erikson used the terms crisis
in a medical sense; that is, it is like an acute
period during illness, at the end of which
the patient takes a turn for the worse or
better.
ERIKSON’S 8 PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES
1. BASIC TRUST VS MISTRUST
(birth to 1 ½ years old)
In the first stage, which is by far the most
important, infants should develop a sese of
basic trust. For Erikson, trust has an
unusually broad meaning. To the trusting
infant, it is not so much that the world is a
safe and happy place but rather that it is an
orderly, predictable place; that is, infants
learn about causes and effects. Trust
flourishes with warmth, care, and also
discipline.
2. AUTONOMY VS SHAME AND DOUBT
(1 ½ to 3 years old)
When children are about 1 ½ years old,
they should move into the second stage,
characterized by the crisis of autonomy
versus shame and doubt. Children begin to
gain control over their bodies and is the
usual age at which toilet training is begun.
Erikson agreed with other psychoanalysis
about the importance of toiler training and
believed that the sources of generosity and
creativity lie in this experience. Toilet
training is not the only accomplishment of
the period, because children of this age
usually start learning to be self-governing
in all of their behaviors.
3. INITIATIVE VS GUILT
(3 to 5 years old)
The third crisis, initiative versus guilt,
begins when children are about 3 years old.
Building on the ability to control
themselves, children now learn to have
some influence over other people in the
family and to successfully manipulate their
surroundings. They should not merely
react, they should initiate. If parents and
others make children feel incompetent,
however, they develop a generalized
feeling of guilt about themselves.
4. INDUSTRY VS INFERIORITY
(5 to 12 years old)
The fourth stage corresponds closely to the
child’s elementary school years. Now the
task is to go beyond imitating ideal models
and to learn the basic technology of the
culture. Children expand their horizons
beyond the family and begin to explore the
neighborhood. Their play becomes more
purposeful, and they seek knowledge to
complete the tasks that they set for
themselves. A sense of accomplishment in
making and building should prevail,
otherwise children may develop a lasting
sense of inferiority.
5. IDENTITY AND REPUDIATION VERSUS
INDENTITY CONFUSION (12 to 18 years old)
The main task of the adolescent is to
achieve a state of identity. Erikson, who
originated the term identity crisis, used the
word in a special way. In addition to
thinking of identity as the general picture
one has of oneself, Erikson referred to it as
a state toward which one strives. If you are
in a state of identity, the various aspects of
your self-image would be in agreement
with each other; they would be identical.
Ideally, a person in the state of identity has
no internal conflicts whatsoever.
6. INTIMACY AND SOLIDARITY VS
ISOLATION
(18 to 25 years old)
In the sixth stage, intimacy with others
should develop. Erikson is speaking here of
far more than sexual intimacy. He is talking
about the essential ability to relate one’s
deepest hopes and fears to another
person, and to accept in turn another
person’s need for intimacy.
7. GENERATIVITY VS STAGNATION
(25 to 65 years old)
Generativity means the ability to be useful
to ourselves and to society. As in the
industry stage, the goal here is to be
productive and creative, thus leading to a
sense of personal fulfillment. Furthermore,
a sense of trying to make the world a better
place for the young in general, and for
one’s own children in particular, emerges.
In this stage, people become mentors to
younger individuals, sharing their
knowledge and philosophy of life. When
people fail in generativity, they begin to
stagnate, to become bored and self-
indulgent, unable to contribute to society’s
welfare. Such adults often act as if they are
their own child.
8. INTEGRITY VS DESPAIR
(65 years old and older)
When people look back over their lives and
feel they have made the wrong decisions,
or more commonly, that they have too
frequently failed to make any decision at
all, they see life as lacking integration. They
feel despair at the impossibility of “having
just one more chance to make things right”
They often hide their terror of death by
appearing contemptuous of humanity in
general, and of those of their own religion
or race in particular. They feel disgust for
themselves.
To the extent that individuals have been
successful in resolving the first seven crises,
they achieve a sense of personal integrity.
Adults who have a sense of integrity accept
their lives as having been well spent. They
feel a kinship with people pf other cultures
and of previous and future generations.
They have a sense of having helped to
create a more dignified life for humankind.
They have gained wisdom.
The Cognitive Developmental Approach
Have your ever been in a restaurant
wondered why some babies try to find the
toy they knocked off their tray, while
others made no attempt to retrieve it or
even look for it? This apparently simple
behavior and other things that babies say
and do fascinated the Swiss psychologist,
Jean Piaget. Born in Neuchatel, Switzerland
in 1896, Piaget’s training as a biologist had
a major impact on his thinking about
cognitive development. His fascination with
the processes that led children to make
incorrect answers in reasoning tests caused
him to turn his attention to the analysis of
children’s developing intelligence. Many
believe Jean Piaget’s influence was due to
his overarching theory of cognitive
development, which also was responsible
for the resurgence of interest in cognitive
studies. For an excellent discussion of this
topic.
Jean Piaget’s Theory
Whereas Freud was concerned with the
structures of the personality, Jean Piaget
sought to understand the cognitive
structures of the intellect. Beginning his
scholarly career at the age of 11, Piaget
published numerous papers on birds,
shellfish, and other topics of natural
history. As a result, the diligent Swiss was
offered the curator’s position at the
Geneva Natural History Museum. He was
only 15 at the time and turned the offer
down to finish high school. He received his
PhD in biology at the age of 21 and wrote
more than 50 books during his lifetime.
According to Piaget, thinking is composed
of numerous operations that enable the
individual to manipulate the environment.
Operations are mental, internalized
actions. They are similar to programs in a
computer. Programs enable the computer
to manipulate the data fed into it in various
ways. Mental operations do the same. In
fact, mental operations allow people to
take things apparat and reassemble them
without actually touching the object. To
continue the metaphor, schemes are like
files used in computer programs. How did take it in. Think of eating. We take food
Piaget explain these accomplishments? into the structure of our mouths and
change it to fit the shape of our mouths,
throats, and digestive tract. We take
objects, concepts, and events into our
minds similarly; We incorporate them into
Key concepts in Piaget’s Theory our mental structures, changing them to fit
Stages. After many years of observing the structures as we change the food to fit
children of all ages, Piaget believed that our physical structures. For example, you
intelligence matures through the growth of are now studying Piaget’s views on
increasingly effective cognitive structures. cognitive development. These ideas are
These structures ca best be defined as the unique and will require effort to
blueprints that enable us to organize and understand them. You are attempting to
adapt to our world. Piaget believed that comprehend them by using the cognitive
cognitive development means that we form structures you now possess. You are
more sophisticated cognitive structures as assimilating Piaget’s ideas; that is, you are
we pass through four stages: mentally taking them in and shaping them
to fit your cognitive structures.
The sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years
old); the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years
old) the concrete operational stage (7 to 11
years old); and the formal operational
stage (11 years old and up). Thus, Piaget
believed that cognitive functioning begins
as responses to concrete phenomena—
babies know only what they can touch,
taste, or see. Our ability to use symbols and
to think abstractly increases with each
subsequent stage until we are able to
manipulate abstract concepts and consider
hypothetical alternatives.

Functional invariants. Piaget stated that we

inherit a method of intellectual functioning
that enables us to respond to our
environment by forming cognitive
structures. He suggested that two
psychological mechanisms, adaptation and
organization, are responsible for the
development of our cognitive structures.
Because we use the same two mechanisms
constantly throughout our lives, Piaget
named them functional invariants.

Piaget believed that adaptation consists of

assimilation and accommodation. When we
assimilate something, we incorporate it; we