Programme Development presentation

1. Erik Erikson
Venessa Brown
Tremaine Gordon
Veronique Beckford – Scott
Andrea Jackson- Wiggan
Shelly- Ann Campbell
Erikson’s Impact on
Counselling

2. Content
• Background • Impact
– Biography – Ego & Identity
– Introduction – Choices
• Contributions
– Writing
• References
– Theories
– Psychosocial
Development

3. Background: Biography
• Erik Homburger • Born June 15, 1902 in
Erikson (1902-1994) Frankfurt am
• Heavy influence on our Main, Germany by
psychological Danish parents.
understanding of the • Married in 1930, to Joan
young. MowatSerson, who
• Some identity crises of studied education, arts
his own may have and crafts, and writing.
sparked his interest in
study

4. Introduction
• While Freud’s theory had focused on the
psychosexual aspects of development, Erikson’s
addition of other influences helped to broaden and
expand psychoanalytic theory. He also contributed to
our understanding of personality as it is developed
and shaped over the course of the lifespan.

5. • Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory attempts to
explain changes that occur in social relationships and
self-understanding. Erikson seeks to do this by
describing the relationship between
psychological, biological, and societal development
and its connection with a person's relationship to their
own society .

6. Contributions: Written Works
• Childhood and Society (1950)
• Young Man Luther. A Study in Psychoanalysis and
History (1958)
• Insight and Responsibility (1964) A collection of 6 essays
• Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968)
• Gandhi's Truth: On the Origin of Militant Nonviolence
(1969)
• Adulthood (edited book, 1978)
• Vital Involvement in Old Age (with J.M. Erikson and H.
Kivnick, 1986)
• The Life Cycle Completed (with J.M. Erikson, 1987)

7. Contributions: Theories
(concept of self)
• Main task of the adolescent is achieve a state of Identity
• Identity is a state towards which one strives
• When various aspects of self-concept are in agreement
• In choosing an identity, we repudiate (give up) other
choices

8. Contributions: Theories
• In democratic society, where many choices exist,
society plays a role in development.
• In adolescence, we experiment with many
choices, searching for those that suit us, without
considering responsibility for any particular one.
• Adolescent tolerance of the ambiguity of
indecision, and avoiding making too quick a
choice of identity leads to a better sense of self,
and a stronger development.

9. PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
As a pioneer in the study of the life cycle, Mr. Erikson
saw it consisting of these eight crucial stages.

12. CONTRIBUTION TO DIFFERENT
DISCIPLINES
• Erikson's influence, compounded by clinical studies
of children, a teaching post at Harvard
University, popular lectures and best-selling books on
Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther, pervaded
many layers of society, from education to medicine to
law to biography to psychiatry to lowbrow culture.

13. • His popular recognition reached a peak in the
70's, particularly because of his identification with the
development of "identity crisis," a term he coined.
But his scholarly contributions have assured him of a
place of eminence in many disciplines.

14. EGO & IDENTITY
• Erikson suggesting that the ego and the sense of
identity are shaped over the entire life span and that
experiences later in life might help heal the hurts of
early childhood. In counseling the counselors try to
understand the patients earlier years so as to help
them to transition from one stage to another
successfully.

15. IMPACT: CHOICES
• We can apply the theory in situations where an
individual seems stuck between stages, or searching
to move to earlier or later stages out of sequence.
• If choices have not been fully made, a return to those
stages may be predicted.

16. REFERENCES
• Studer, J. R. (2006). Erik Erikson's Psychosocial
Stages Applied to Supervision. Guidance &
Counseling, 21(3), 168-173.
• Erik Erikson. (2011). Columbia Electronic
Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1.
• Weiland, S. (1993). Erik Erikson: Ages, stages, and
stories. Generations, 17(2), 17.