Stages of Life
Stages of Life Paper
Adult Development & Psychotherapy
I believe that adult development theory is not sufficiently emphasized in our psychology and counseling training schools. This is unfortunate, because I believe it offers a unique and helpful perspective to the task of psychotherapy. Because I wish to offer to my prospective patients some idea of the importance of this topic, and how it informs my clinical practice, I offer below a synopsis of the theory and its development.
In a most fundamental sense, development in adulthood is about getting older. Traditional psychotherapy looks at how our adult emotional lives are rooted in childhood and infancy. But what happens when the child becomes an adult? Is adulthood only the unconscious reenactment of early childhood conflicts and traumas?
In the 1950s, famous author and psychologist Erik Erikson constructed a psychosocial, developmental model of the life cycle. He wrote numerous anthropological studies and psychobiography’s in order to buttress his views. Drawing upon Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham's psychosexual theory of infant and child development, Erikson described eight ages of the life cycle. Childhood and adolescence cover the first five stages. The last three stages focus on adulthood and its crises: intimacy versus isolation (in young adulthood); generativity versus stagnation (in adulthood proper); and ego integrity versus despair (in old age).
Other theories of adult development followed Erikson’s path, although they had different emphases. Elliott Jaques has emphasized the importance of the mid-life crisis in individual development. Arguing for a confrontation with personal mortality as the central issue of mid-life development, He presented a theory of developmental stages that was a variant of those like Erikson, or adult development researcher Daniel Levinson. Other important theorists have included Therese Benedek, Bernice Neugarten, Roger Gould, Peter Newton, and George Valliant.
Adult Development & Psychotherapy
I believe that adult development theory is not sufficiently emphasized in our psychology and counseling training schools. This is unfortunate, because I believe it offers a unique and helpful perspective to the task of psychotherapy. Because I wish to offer to my prospective patients some idea of the importance of this topic, and how it informs my clinical practice, I offer below a synopsis of the theory and its development.
In a most fundamental sense, development in adulthood is about getting older. Traditional psychotherapy looks at how our adult emotional lives are rooted in childhood and infancy. But what happens when the child becomes an adult? Is adulthood only the unconscious reenactment of early childhood conflicts and traumas?
In the 1950s, famous author and psychologist Erik Erikson constructed a psychosocial, developmental model of the life cycle. He wrote numerous anthropological studies and psychobiography’s in order to buttress his views. Drawing upon Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham's psychosexual theory of infant and child development, Erikson described eight ages of the life cycle. Childhood and adolescence cover the first five stages. The last three stages focus on adulthood and its crises: intimacy versus isolation (in young adulthood); generativity versus stagnation (in adulthood proper); and ego integrity versus despair (in old age).
Other theories of adult development followed Erikson’s path, although they had different emphases. Elliott Jaques has emphasized the importance of the mid-life crisis in individual development. Arguing for a confrontation with personal mortality as the central issue of mid-life development, He presented a theory of developmental stages that was a variant of those like Erikson, or adult development researcher Daniel Levinson. Other important theorists have included Therese Benedek, Bernice Neugarten, Roger Gould, Peter Newton, and George Valliant.
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