Ego psychology E. Theoretical positions of E. Erikson

Erikson's theoretical formulations deal exclusively with ego development. Although he consistently insisted that his ideas were no more than a further systematic development of Freud's concept of psychosexual development in the light of new discoveries in the social and biological sciences, Erikson decisively departed from classical psychoanalysis on four important points. Firstly, his work clearly shows a decisive shift in emphasis from the id to the ego, which Freud himself only partially recognized in last years of its activities. From Erikson's perspective, it is rather the ego that forms the basis of human behavior and functioning. He viewed the ego as an autonomous personality structure, the main direction of development of which is social adaptation; In parallel, the development of ids and instincts occurs. A similar view of human nature, called ego psychology , is radically different from early psychodynamic thinking in that ego psychology describes people as more rational and therefore making conscious decisions and consciously solving life's problems. While Freud believed that the ego struggled to resolve the conflict between instinctual drives and moral constraints, Erikson argued that the ego is an autonomous system that interacts with reality through perception, thinking, attention and memory. Paying special attention to the adaptive functions of the ego, Erikson believed that a person, interacting with the environment in the process of his development, becomes more and more competent.

Secondly, Erickson develops A New Look regarding the individual relationship with parents and the cultural context in which the family exists. If Freud was interested in the influence of parents on the formation of the child’s personality, then Erikson emphasizes the historical conditions in which the child’s ego is formed. It is based on the results of observations of people belonging to different cultures to show that ego development is inevitable and closely related to the changing characteristics of social prescriptions and value systems.

Third, the theory of ego development covers the entire life space of an individual (that is, from infancy to adulthood and old age). Freud, on the contrary, limited himself to the influence of early childhood experiences and did not pay attention to issues of development beyond the genital stage.

And finally, fourthly, Freud and Erikson have different views on the nature and resolution of psychosexual conflicts. Freud's goal was to reveal the essence and characteristics of the influence of unconscious mental life on the individual, as well as to explain how early trauma can lead to psychopathology in adulthood. Erikson, on the contrary, saw his task as drawing attention to a person’s ability to overcome life’s difficulties of a psychosocial nature. His theory focuses on ego qualities, that is, its advantages, revealed in different periods of development. Perhaps this last distinction is key to understanding Erikson's concept of organization and personal development. Freud's fatalistic warning that people are doomed to social decline if they give in to their instinctual aspirations is countered by the optimistic position that every personal and social crisis represents a kind of challenge that leads the individual to personal growth and overcoming life's obstacles. Knowing how a person dealt with each significant life problems or how inadequate resolution of early problems left him unable to cope with later problems constitutes, in Erikson's opinion, the only key to understanding his life.

So far we have touched only on the main theoretical differences between Erikson and Freud. However, it is worth noting that there are also issues on which there is agreement between them. For example, both theorists agree that the stages of personality development are predetermined, and the order of their passage is unchanged. Erikson also recognizes the biological and sexual bases of all later motivational and personality dispositions, and also accepts the Freudian structural model of personality (id, ego, superego). However, despite the presence of similar provisions, many personologists believe that Erikson's theoretical premises differ from those in classical psychoanalysis.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing tendency towards an integrated, holistic consideration of personality from the standpoint of different theories and approaches, and an integrative concept of development is also outlined here, taking into account the coordinated, systemic formation and interdependent transformation of all those aspects of personality, which were emphasized in line with various approaches and theories. One of these concepts was the theory belonging to the American psychologist E. Erikson, in which, more than in others, this tendency was expressed.

E. Erikson, in his views on development, adhered to the so-called epigenetic principle: genetic predetermination of the stages that a person necessarily goes through in his personal development from birth to the end of his days. The most significant contribution of E. Erikson to the theory of personal development is the identification and description of eight life psychological crises that inevitably occur in every person:

1. Crisis of trust - mistrust (during the first year of life).

2. Autonomy versus doubt and shame (around 2-3 years of age).

3. The emergence of initiative as opposed to feelings of guilt (from approximately 3 to 6 years).

4. Hard work as opposed to an inferiority complex (ages 7 to 12 years).

5. Personal self-determination as opposed to individual dullness and conformism (from 12 to 18 years).

6. Intimacy and sociability as opposed to personal psychological isolation (about 20 years).

7. Concern for raising the new generation as opposed to “immersion in oneself” (between 30 and 60 years).

8. Satisfaction with life lived as opposed to despair (over 60 years old).

The formation of personality in Erikson’s concept is understood as a change of stages, at each of which there is a qualitative transformation of a person’s inner world and a radical change in his relationships with people around him. As a result of this, he as a person acquires something new, characteristic specifically for this stage of development and retained by him (at least in the form of noticeable traces) throughout his life.

Personal new formations themselves, according to E. Erikson, do not arise out of nowhere - their appearance at a certain stage is prepared by the entire process of previous personality development. Something new in it can emerge and become established only when appropriate psychological and behavioral conditions have already been created in the past.

Forming and developing as a person, a person acquires not only positive qualities, but also disadvantages. It is almost impossible to present in detail in a single theory all possible options for individual personal development based on all possible combinations of positive and negative neoplasms. With this difficulty in mind, E. Erikson depicted only two extreme lines in his concept personal development: normal and abnormal. In their pure form, they almost never occur in life, but they contain all sorts of intermediate options for a person’s personal development (Table 2).

Table 2.Stages of personality development according to E. Erikson

E. Erikson identified eight stages of development, one to one correlated with the crises of age-related development described above. At the first stage, the child’s development is determined almost exclusively by the communication of adults, primarily the mother, with him. At this stage, prerequisites may already arise for the manifestation of desire for people in the future or withdrawal from them.

The second stage determines the formation in the child of such personal qualities as independence and self-confidence. Their formation also largely depends on the nature of communication and treatment of adults with the child.

Note that by the age of three, the child already acquires certain personal forms of behavior, and here E. Erikson argues in accordance with the data of experimental studies. One can argue about the legitimacy of reducing all development specifically to communication and treatment of the child by adults (research shows the important role of objective joint activity in this process), but the fact that a three-year-old child already behaves like a small person is almost beyond doubt.

The third and fourth stages of development, according to E. Erikson, also generally coincide with the ideas of D. B. Elkonin and other domestic psychologists. This concept, like those we have already discussed, emphasizes the importance of educational and work activities for the mental development of the child during these years. The difference between the views of our scientists and the positions espoused by E. Erikson lies only in the fact that he focuses on the formation not of operational and cognitive skills and abilities, but of personality traits associated with the corresponding types of activities: initiative, activity and hard work (in positive pole of development), passivity, reluctance to work and an inferiority complex in relation to labor and intellectual abilities (at the negative pole of development).

The following stages of personal development are not represented in the theories of domestic psychologists. But we can quite agree that the acquisition of new life and social roles forces a person to look at many things in a new way, and this, apparently, is the main point of personal development in older age following adolescence.

At the same time, the line of abnormal personality development outlined by E. Erikson for these ages raises objections. It clearly looks pathological, while this development can take on other forms. It is obvious that E. Erikson's belief system was strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and clinical practice.

In addition, at each of the stages of development he identifies, the author points only to individual points that explain its progress, and only to some personal new formations characteristic of the corresponding age. Without proper attention, for example, in the early stages of child development, the child’s assimilation and use of speech remained, and mostly only in abnormal forms.

Nevertheless, this concept contains a significant amount of truth in life, and most importantly, it allows you to imagine important period of childhood in the entire process of personal development of a person.

Erickson based his theory solely on ego development. Although he always insisted that his ideas were nothing more than a further systematic continuation of Freud's concept of psychosexual development in the light of new discoveries in the social and biological sciences. However, Erickson decisively departed from classical psychoanalysis on four important points.

First, his work clearly shows a decisive shift in emphasis from the id to the ego, which Freud himself only partially recognized in the last years of his activity. From Erikson's perspective, it is rather the ego that forms the basis of human behavior and functioning. He viewed the ego as an autonomous personality structure, the main direction of development of which is social adaptation; In parallel, the development of ids and instincts occurs. This view of human nature, called ego psychology, differs radically from early psychodynamic thinking in that ego psychology describes people as more rational and therefore making conscious decisions and consciously solving life's problems. While Freud believed that the ego struggled to resolve the conflict between instinctual drives and moral constraints, Erikson argued that the ego is an autonomous system that interacts with reality through perception, thinking, attention and memory. Paying special attention to the adaptive functions of the ego, Erikson believed that a person, interacting with the environment in the process of his development, becomes more and more competent.

Second, Erikson develops a new perspective regarding the individual's relationship with parents and the cultural context in which the family exists. If Freud was interested in the influence of parents on the formation of the child’s personality, then Erikson emphasizes the historical conditions in which the child’s ego is formed. It draws on observations of people from different cultures to show that ego development is inevitable and closely related to changing social prescriptions and value systems.

Third, the theory of ego development covers the entire life space of an individual (i.e., from infancy to adulthood and old age). Freud, on the contrary, limited himself to the influence of early childhood experiences and did not pay attention to issues of development beyond the genital stage.

And finally, fourthly, Freud and Erikson have different views on the nature and resolution of psychosexual conflicts. Freud's goal was to reveal the essence and characteristics of the influence of unconscious mental life on the individual, as well as to explain how early trauma can lead to psychopathology in adulthood. Erikson, on the contrary, saw his task as drawing attention to a person’s ability to overcome life’s difficulties of a psychosocial nature. His theory emphasizes the qualities of the ego, i.e. its advantages, revealed in different periods of development. Perhaps this last distinction is key to understanding Erikson's concept of organization and personal development. Freud's fatalistic warning that people are doomed to social decline if they give in to their instinctual aspirations is countered by the optimistic position that every personal and social crisis represents a kind of challenge that leads the individual to personal growth and overcoming life's obstacles. Knowing how a person dealt with each of life's significant problems, or how inadequate resolution of early problems left him unable to cope with later problems, is, according to Erikson, the only key to understanding one's life.

So far we have touched only on the main theoretical differences between Erikson and Freud. However, it is worth noting that there are also issues on which there is agreement between them. For example, both theorists agree that the stages of personality development are predetermined, and the order of their passage is unchanged. Erikson also recognizes the biological and sexual bases of all later motivational and personality dispositions, and also accepts the Freudian structural model of personality (id, ego, superego). However, despite the presence of similar provisions, many personologists believe that Erikson's theoretical premises differ from those in classical psychoanalysis.

1.2 Ego psychology, as a result of the development of psychoanalysis

Many researchers after Freud tried to revise psychoanalysis to show the significance of ego processes and to trace their development. The most prominent of the ego psychologists was Erik Erikson. Erikson's theoretical formulations concern only the development of the ego itself. Although he constantly insisted that his ideas were no more than a further systematic development of Freud's concept of psychosexual development in the light of new discoveries in the social and biological sciences, Erikson decisively departed from classical psychoanalysis on four important points. It should be noted that in his works a decisive shift in emphasis from the id to the ego is clearly visible, which Freud himself only partially recognized in the last years of his activity. From Erikson's perspective, it is rather the ego that forms the basis of human behavior and functioning. He viewed the ego as an autonomous personality structure, the main direction of development of which is social adaptation, and in parallel there is the development of ids and instincts. This view of human nature, which is called ego psychology, is fundamentally different from early psychodynamic thinking in that ego psychology describes people as more rational and therefore making conscious decisions and consciously solving life's problems. Unlike Freud, who believed that the ego struggles, thereby trying to resolve the conflict between instinctual drives and moral restrictions, Erikson argued that the ego is an autonomous system that interacts with reality through mental processes such as perception, thinking, attention and memory . Paying special attention to the adaptive functions of the ego, Erickson believed that a person, interacting with the environment in the process of his development, becomes more and more competent.

E. Erikson also develops a new view regarding the individual relationship with parents and the cultural context in which the family exists. If Freud was interested in the influence of parents on the formation of the child’s personality, then Erikson emphasizes the historical conditions in which the child’s ego is formed. It draws on observations of people from different cultures to show that ego development is inevitable and closely related to changing social prescriptions and value systems.

The theory of ego development covers the entire life space of an individual (the period from infancy to old age). Freud, on the contrary, limited himself to the influence of early childhood experiences and did not pay special attention to issues of development beyond the genital stage. It is important to note that Freud and Erikson had different views on the nature and resolution of psychosexual conflicts. Freud's goal was to reveal the essence and characteristics of the influence of unconscious mental life on the individual, as well as to explain how early trauma can lead to psychopathology in adulthood. Erikson, on the contrary, saw his task as drawing attention to a person’s ability to overcome life’s difficulties of a psychosocial nature. In his theory, the main thing is the qualities of the ego, i.e. its advantages, revealed in different periods of development. Perhaps this last distinction is key to understanding Erikson's concept of organization and personal development. Freud's fatalistic warning that people are doomed to social decline if they give in to their instinctual aspirations is countered by the optimistic position that every personal and social crisis represents a kind of challenge that leads the individual to personal growth and overcoming life's obstacles. Knowing how a person copes with each of life's significant problems, or how inadequate resolution of early problems has left him unable to cope with later problems, is, according to Erikson, the only key to understanding his life.

But between these two great men there were not only theoretical differences, but also issues on which their opinions coincided. For example, both Freud and Erikson believed that the stages of personality development are predetermined, and the order in which they occur is unchangeable. Erikson also recognizes the biological and sexual bases of all later motivational and personality dispositions and accepts Freud's structural model of personality (id, ego, superego).

1.3 Epigenetic principle

Erikson called his model of the stages of human development the epigenetic model. This model is the first psychological theory that describes in detail the cycle of human life: childhood, maturity and old age. According to Erikson, the psychological growth of a person is similar to the development of an embryo. The concept of epigenesis implies that each element develops above the other parts. "Epi" means "above" and "genesis" means birth. Erikson's model is similar in structure embryonic development, in which the occurrence of each subsequent stage is determined by the development of the previous one.

All organs of a living being and their systems develop in certain periods of time and in a given sequence. Erickson explains the epigenetic principle this way: “Everything that grows has a soil, from this soil separate parts rise, each of which has its own period of growth, until all the parts rise and form a single functional whole.”

In other words, this phrase can be interpreted as follows:

1. the personality develops stepwise, the transition from one stage to another is predetermined by the individual’s readiness to move in the direction of further growth, expansion of the perceived social horizon and the radius of social interaction;

2. society is structured in such a way that the development of a person’s social capabilities is accepted favorably, society tries to help maintain this trend, as well as maintain the proper pace and correct sequence development.

In his book Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson divided human life into eight separate stages of psychosocial ego development (or as they say, “the eight ages of man”). According to him, these stages are the result of an epigenetically unfolding “personal blueprint”, which in turn is inherited genetically. Is the epigenetic concept of development (in Greek meaning “after birth”, “origin”) based on the idea that each stage of the life cycle occurs at a specific time for it (the so-called “critical period”)? And also that a fully functioning personality is formed only by passing through successively all stages in its development. In addition, according to Erikson, each psychosocial stage is accompanied by a crisis - a turning point in the life of an individual, which arises as a consequence of achieving a certain level of psychological maturity and social demands placed on the individual at this stage. In other words, each of the eight phases of the human life cycle is characterized by an evolutionary task specific to this particular phase (“phase-specific”) - a problem in social development, which at one time is presented to the individual, but does not necessarily find its resolution. The characteristic patterns of behavior for an individual are determined by how each of these tasks is ultimately resolved or how the crisis itself is overcome. Conflict plays a vital role in Erikson's theory because the growth and expansion of the scope of interpersonal relationships is associated with the increasing vulnerability of ego functions at each stage. At the same time, he notes that crisis means “not the threat of catastrophe, but a turning point, and thereby an ontogenetic source of both strength and insufficient adaptation.”

Each psychosocial crisis, when viewed from an assessment point of view, contains both positive and negative components. After all, if the conflict is resolved successfully (i.e., at the previous stage the ego was enriched with new positive qualities), then now the ego absorbs a new positive component (basic trust and autonomy), and this guarantees the healthy development of the personality in the future. But if the conflict remains unresolved or receives an unsatisfactory resolution, the developing ego is thereby harmed and a negative component is built into it (for example, basal mistrust, shame, doubt). Although theoretically predictable and well-defined conflicts arise along the path of personality development, it does not follow from this that at the previous stages successes and failures are necessarily the same. The qualities that the ego acquires at each stage do not reduce its susceptibility to new internal conflicts or changing conditions. The goal is for the person to adequately resolve each crisis, and then he will be able to approach the next stage of development as a more adaptive and mature personality.

Of all the theories of depth psychology that appeared in the second half of the 20th century, Erikson’s personality theory was perhaps the most widely recognized and widespread. This is due to the fact that his thoughts about the integrity of the individual, her identity (identity) to herself and the society in which she lives, have become very relevant for most modern societies, in which one of the problems is the disunity and loneliness of people.

As a student and follower of A. Freud, daughter of Z., he studied and further developed not so much the ideas of classical psychoanalysis, but of Ego psychology. This concept, laid down by A. Freud and A. Kardiner, was based on the idea that the main part of the personality structure is not the unconscious Id, as in Freud, but the conscious part of the Ego, which strives in its development to preserve its integrity and individuality.

Equally important, Erikson's theory of personality tied together several trends in the development of personality psychology, combining the psychoanalytic approach with important ideas of humanistic psychology, mainly the thoughts about the ambiguous role of adaptation, which suspends the self-development of the individual, and the importance of maintaining one's own identity and integrity. The main provisions of his concept were outlined in the book “Childhood and Society,” which brought Erikson wide fame. His subsequent works “Young Luther” (1958), “Identity” (1968) and “Gandhi’s Truth” (1969) laid the foundation for a new approach to the analysis of the relationship between man and society, including the analysis of historical events and characters. The direction he created in the study of history psychological science called psychohistory.

Erikson's personality theory not only revises Freud's position regarding the hierarchy of personality structures, but also in understanding the role of the child's environment, culture and social environment, which, from his point of view, have a huge influence on development. He places special emphasis on the child-family relationship, and more specifically on the child-mother relationship. He believed that a person's "innate drives" are fragments of aspirations that must be collected, acquired meaning and organized during a period of protracted childhood. The lengthening of the childhood period is precisely connected with this need for the socialization of children. Therefore, Erikson argued that the “instinctive weapons” (sexual and aggressive) in humans are much more mobile and plastic than in animals. The organization and direction of development of these innate drives are associated with methods of upbringing and education, which vary from culture to culture and are predetermined by traditions. Each society develops its own institutions of socialization in order to help children with different individual qualities become full members of a given social group.

The main ones for Erikson are the provisions on the role of the environment, the integrity of the individual and the need for constant development and creativity of the individual in the process of his life. He believed that personality development continues throughout life, in fact until a person’s death, and not only in the first years of life, as Freud believed. This process is influenced not only by parents and people close to the child, i.e. not only a narrow circle of people, as is customary in traditional psychoanalysis, but also friends, work, society as a whole. Erikson called this process itself the process of identity formation, emphasizing the importance of preserving and maintaining the integrity of the personality, the integrity of the Ego, which is the main factor in resistance to neuroses.

He identified eight main stages in the development of identity, detailed description which are given in Chap. 4.

Emphasizing the importance of developing an active, open and creative position in a person, Erickson constantly spoke about the importance of maintaining integrity and consistency of personality structure, and wrote about the harmfulness of internal conflicts. Not a single psychologist before him questioned the need to develop independence or overcome feelings of inferiority or guilt. Erikson, although he does not consider these qualities positive, nevertheless argues that for children with a developed sense of basic mistrust and dependence, it is much more important to remain in line with an already given path of development than to change it to the opposite, unusual for them, since it can disrupt the integrity of their personality, their identity. Therefore, for such children, the development of initiative and activity can be disastrous, while lack of self-confidence will help them find an adequate way of life for them and develop a role identity. In principle, these views of Erikson are especially important for practical psychology, for the correction and formation of people’s characteristic, individual style of behavior.

Erikson also attached great importance to the external stability of the system in which a person lives, since a violation of this stability, a change in guidelines, social norms and values ​​also violates identity and devalues ​​a person’s life. Based on the materials obtained in his research, Erickson came to the conclusion that the structure of identity includes three parts: 1) somatic identity, since the organism seeks to maintain its integrity when interacting with the outside world, 2) personal identity, which integrates external and a person’s internal experience, and 3) social identity, which consists in the joint creation and maintenance by people of a certain order and stability. An acutely experienced identity crisis pushes a person to solve not only his own, but also socio-historical problems. Substantiating the provisions of his psychohistory, Erikson sought to analyze historical events from the point of view of the biography of outstanding people. Thus, in his books about M. Luther and M. Gandhi, he connects their personal problems associated with experiencing an identity crisis with historical problems and the crisis of an entire generation. Describing the activities of outstanding people, Erikson emphasized that the significance of this activity is due to the fact that the new identity that they developed subsequently became the property of society, moving from the personal to the social sphere.

Erikson's personality theory demonstrates the productivity of combining several approaches, several points of view on personality, which make it possible to see the process of its development from different angles.