Essay On Erikson's Psychosocial Theory

Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory was one that focused on the psychosocial stages of life that influences how a person develops from infancy to late adulthood. Erikson’s theory was meant to show how culture, society, and the environment a person grows up in can be a major factor in successfully going through each stage. According to Erikson’s theory, not completing a stage early in life as a child, or later as an adolescent, can be detrimental to a person’s personality. There are eight total stages included in Erikson’s theory, and all stages require certain tasks to be completed to have a healthy state of mind; if they are not completed then it could result in different issues for the person. During the first stage of trust versus mistrust, …show more content…
Failure to meet these milestones can make an adult in this stage of life, feel as if they have failed themselves and wasted their lives. In the final stage, ego integrity versus despair, ages sixty five and over, is a time when people start to slow down, and really reflect back on their lives. Seeing that they have accomplished many things, it provides them with a sense of completeness in their life, and to also be able to not fear death and accept it. Elderly people in this stage of life who feel as if they did not complete certain goals, and did not live the full life they want, are often lead into depression and hopelessness. Erik Erikson’s theory of the psychosocial stages of life can be used in the field of mental health nursing as a tool to assess what may have happened at a stage in someone’s life. A tragic experience at anytime in one’s life can affect mental health; thus affecting the way a person develops. By examining the different psychosocial stages, maybe the root of a person’s problems can be discovered, and they can successfully complete each stage in their