Erik Erikson’s final developmental stage, integrity versus despair, is fascinating to me for different reasons. Within this final stage, the elderly hold on to a certain pride of their younger years. Admiring everything that they did back in their day, even if it is something that might not always be something to be proud about. There are some elderly people who feel like they need to hold on to every little thing in their house. They just can’t find themselves throwing away the newspaper from ten years ago because it has a significant meaning to them. This is referred to as compulsive hoarding, to anyone else they might see it as trash, but to them it might have deep and meaningful memories. Another concept from this same chapter really stood
