Psy 230 Erikson's Timeline

According to Erikson, there are eight stages of life. They are infancy, early childhood, childhood (play age), childhood (school age), adolescents and young adulthood. I just turned 34 this month and I know psychologically that I am in the adulthood portion of my life. Over the years I have caught myself asking questions like; who am I? And how do I fit myself into society? I would say over 10 years ago I began the sixth stage of my life, intimacy versus isolation. When I finished high school I thought I found that special person until I noticed that we became different people. I wanted more out of someone to be able to date and be able to fall in love with the right person. The relationship between the two stages is complex and many people define themselves through intimate relationships with others; and other proper sequence of the stages can be reversed in many people. Woman in the society traditionally exemplified a merging of intimacy and identify issues such as woman identify being defined by her intimate relationships. Sometimes it can be hard to separate the differences between the development of intimate relationships and adult itself. Erikson believes that a person is unable to be truly intimate with others until he or she has made progress with addressing their own identity. Marcia’s, the researcher for identity status, developed a similar idea with addressing their own identity. Macias also developed an idea designed to determine the quality of intimacy in a person 's life. A person answered several questions about dating, friendship, and interpersonal he or she commitments may be classified into four categories; Intimate-works at developing mutual personal relationships, has several close friends, involved in a committed love relationship, and is able to express both affectionate and angry feelings in the relationship. Pre-intimate- is a person who has dated but is involved in a committed love relationship, is aware of the possibilities of

References: McAdams, (2006) The person: A new introduction to personality psychology (4th ed.) Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons.