FeistFeist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh
Edition

II. Psychodynamic
Theories

9. Erikson: PostFreudian
Theory

Chapter 9

The McGrawHill
Companies, 2009

Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory

only body we will ever have. The ego ideal represents the image we have of ourselves
in comparison with an established ideal; it is responsible for our being satised or
dissatised 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. Although adolescence is ordinarily the time when these three components are changing most rapidly, alterations in body ego, ego ideal, and ego identity can and do take
place at any stage of life.

Societys Inuence
Although inborn capacities are important in personality development, the ego
emerges from and is largely shaped by society. Eriksons emphasis on social and historical factors was in contrast with Freuds mostly biological viewpoint. To Erikson,
the ego exists as potential at birth, but it must emerge from within a cultural environment. Different societies, with their variations in child-rearing practices, tend to
shape personalities that t the needs and values of their culture. For example, Erikson (1963) found that prolonged and permissive nursing of infants of the Sioux nation (sometimes for as long as 4 or 5 years) resulted in what Freud would call oral
personalities: that is, people who gain great pleasure through functions of the mouth.
The Sioux place great value on generosity, and Erikson believed that the reassurance
resulting from unlimited breast-feeding lays the foundation for the virtue of generosity. However, Sioux parents quickly suppress biting, a practice that may contribute to the childs fortitude and ferocity. On the other hand, people of the Yurok
nation set strict regulations concerning elimination of urine and feces, practices that
tend to develop anality, or compulsive neatness, stubbornness, and miserliness. In
European American societies, 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 shermen are adaptive characteristics
that help both the individual and the culture. The fact that European American culture views orality and anality as deviant traits merely displays its own ethnocentric
view of other societies. Erikson (1968, 1974) argued that historically all tribes or nations, including the United States, have developed what he called a pseudospecies:
that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated by a particular society that it is somehow chosen to be the human species. In past centuries, this belief has aided the survival of the tribe, but with modern means of world annihilation, such a prejudiced
perception (as demonstrated by Nazi Germany) threatens the survival of every
nation.
One of Eriksons principal contributions to personality theory was his extension of the Freudian early stages of development to include school age, youth, adulthood, and old age. Before looking more closely at Eriksons theory of ego development, we discuss his view of how personality develops from one stage to the next.

Epigenetic Principle
Erikson believed that the ego develops throughout the various stages of life according to an epigenetic principle, a term borrowed from embryology. Epigenetic development implies a step-by-step growth of fetal organs. The embryo does not begin
as a completely formed little person, waiting to merely expand its structure and

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