Stages of Development

Erikson specified eight stages of psychosocial development over the course
of the life cycle. He saw these unfolding not in a linear sense but epigenetically;
that is, in such a way that each stage builds upon those that came before.
The first four of these stages are those of childhood, and here Erikson
accepts Freud’s delineation but adds a psychosocial dimension to each.
The first stage of development (roughly the first year of life) Freud
termed the oral stage, naming it (as he did with each stage) after that region
of the body seen to be the erogenous zone of that stage. For Freud, the
baby’s psychosexuality expresses itself primarily through the erogenous
power of the mouth and lips. Certainly babies’ tendency to mouth almost
anything they can get hold of indicates a certain erotic appeal of orality at
this time.

However, for Erikson, this bodily expression is not the foundational one.
Rather, orality is a wider theme. The essence of this oral pleasure is the satisfaction
of “taking in” the world. Such taking in is not restricted to the
mouth. Babies take in with their eyes, their ears, their fingers—in every way
possible. Orality, as taking in, is not merely a bodily zone but a psychological
modality of relating to the world. This world-relation also implicates another
person. For a quite helpless baby to be able to get or take in, there
must be another person there giving (typically a parent). This psychological
modality, in other words, is already essentially and profoundly interpersonal. As a result, it is the quality of this interpersonal relationship with the
“mothering ones” that will provide the basis of the baby’s growth at this
stage. If the parents (as the face of the world) are dependably there for the
baby, the baby will come to be able to count on their omnipresent beneficence.
With such experience, the baby develops a sense of “basic trust”—
Erikson’s termfor the ego growth of this first stage. Basic trust implies a certain
relation with the world: specifically, one in which the person can relax
and take his or her own ongoingness for granted. Once trust is gained, such
a person can face the uncertainties to come with the secure confidence that,
whatever may happen, he or she will be fine. In contrast, if the baby does not
encounter a trustworthy world at this stage, he or she will be unable to develop
this core sense of basic trust. The baby will, instead, be overwhelmed
by the experience of “basic mistrust”—the anxiety that accompanies the
lurking, ever-present possibility of threat, that edge of anonymous malevolence.
Then, full openness to the world is always constricted by the need for
the self-preservation of the ego.
Freud identified the second psychosexual stage (roughly the period from
age one to three) as the anal stage, on account of the pleasure available by
the new ability of the child to control eliminative functioning—what is colloquially
called toilet training. Here again, Erikson reexamined this bodily
mode and discovered, at the heart of it, a psychosocial dynamic. The issue of
control in mastering the processes of elimination involves two kinds of action:
retention (of feces or urine) until one gets to the toilet, and then elimination
(once one is at the toilet).

Erikson recognized that this interplay between retention and elimination
is more than merely the organ mode of sphincter control. Rather, it manifests
a more basic psychological modality: the interplay between holding on
and letting go. It is not only with regard to the eliminative functions that this
dynamic gets played out in this stage. Most important, it is in the social
arena, with one’s parents, that toddlers grow this new capacity to exercise
control. Even toilet training itself is an exquisitely interpersonal interaction
of the child with the parental “trainers.”

It is not only toilet training that distinguishes children’s quest for control
at this stage. In many ways the child is now striving for a new encounter with
others. Securely grounded now by the sense of basic trust gained in the previous
stage, children are ready to move from a relationship of dependence
to one of independence. Even being able to stand up on their own two feet
evinces this new relationship. From a newfound delight in the power of
speaking the word “no!” to the appearance of strong preferences in everything
from clothes to food, and most evidently in their emotional reactions
to the denial of these preferences, toddlers are asserting a declaration of independence.

Though the consequent contest of wills with the parents can
be difficult, ultimately the child learns both to have autonomy and to recognize
its social limits. This growth of autonomy is the key gain of this second stage, as the ego grasps its radical independence from the minds or control
of others. If the child does not have the opportunity to develop this experience,
the consequence would be to develop a crippling sense of shame and
self-doubt instead.

The third stage of psychosexual development (ages three through six) is
Freud’s phallic stage, because the child’s sexual organs become the erogenous
zone at this time. Freud did not mean to imply that children experience
their sexuality in the sense of adult, genital sexuality; there is no experience
of orgasms and no interest in intercourse at this time. Rather, for
Freud, the sex organs become erogenous on account of their power to differentiate
gender. Hence, the classic psychoanalytic themes of penis envy
and castration anxiety are rooted in this stage as well as the Oedipal conflict—
children’s imaginal working out of their now gender-based relations
with their parents.

For Erikson, it is not the genitals as bodily organs that are the source of
such anxiety or envy. Rather, they symbolize social roles. As a result, in a sexist
culture, it would be no wonder that a girl may envy the greater psychosocial
status enjoyed by the boy. Correlatively, the boy would experience the
anxiety of losing his newfound gender-based potency. Here again, Erikson
finds a profound interpersonal dynamic at work. This new positing of oneself
is not done only in the child’s fantasy life. The ego at this stage is growing
new capacities to engage the world: the ability to use language, more fine locomotor
activity, and the power of the imagination. Through these developing
capacities, children can thrust themselves forth with a new sense of purpose.
On the secure basis of trust and autonomy, they can now include
initiative in their world relations, supported by their parents as encouraging
prototypes. On the other hand, the parents can so stigmatize such projects
of initiative that children may instead become convinced that they manifest
their badness. In such cases, feelings of guilt can overwhelm their sense of
initiative, as they become crippled by guilt not only for what they have done
but also for who they are as initiating beings.

Freud identified the fourth psychosexual stage as the latency stage (ages
seven to twelve) because psychosexuality was not manifest at that time. It
had become latent, or driven underground, by the conclusion of the Oedipal
conflict. For Freud, psychosexual development is arrested at this stage
and must await the eruption of puberty to get started again. Erikson sees in
this stage a positive growth in the child’s ego. Once more, changes in
psychosocial relations lead the way. The child goes off to school, and to a
wider world beyond the immediate family circle, to encounter the world beyond
the imaginal realm: a place in which actual accomplishments await the
application of actual skills. Rather than being satisfied with imagining hitting
a home run, the child now strives to actually hit the ball. It is, in other
words, a time for the development of skills, techniques, and competencies
that will enable one to succeed at real-world events. Sports, games, school,
bicycling, camping, collecting things, taking care of pets, art, music, even doing chores now offer children arenas to test their growing capacity to
learn the ways of the world.

At the heart of this learning process are teachers, not only professionals
but learned others of many kinds. The child becomes a student to many experts,
from coaches to Cub Scout leaders to the older boy next door who already
knows about computers. Even sports heroes or characters in books
with whom the child has no personal contact can emerge as profoundly
valuable teachers, opening the world and showing the way to mastery of it.
This is what Erikson means by a sense of industry, which is for him the key
egoic gain of this stage. If children’s efforts are not encouraged and cultivated,
however, they can instead find their industrious tendency overwhelmed
by a sense of inferiority and inadequacy.