Erik H. Erikson's ego psychology

• DATE: Late 1930s forward
• TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Personality

Ego psychology, pioneered by Heinz Hartmann, Erik H. Erikson, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Karen Horney, provided a significant new reformation to the personality theory of Freudian psychoanalysis. Erikson’s theory of the growth of the ego throughout the life cycle provided an especially important contribution to this movement.

Introduction

Ego psychology emerged in the late 1930s as a reform movement within psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, as developed by Sigmund Freud in the previous three decades, was an innovative approach to understanding psychological life. Freud developed the methodology and vocabulary to focus on the meaningfulness of lived experience. For Freud, the true meaning of an experience was largely unconscious. Dreams, slips of the tongue or pen, and symptoms provided examples of such unconscious layers of meaning. In psychoanalytic terminology, beneath the level of the conscious ego, there is an unconscious substructure (the id). Freud used the metaphor of an iceberg to relate these two levels, indicating that the conscious level is analogous to the small, visible tip of an iceberg that shows above the water, whereas the unconscious level is like its large, underwater, invisible mass. The ego, this small, surface level of the personality, “manages” one’s relations with the world beyond the psyche. The id, in contrast, is “intrapsychic” in the sense that it is not in a relation with the “outer” world beyond the psyche. Rather, the id draws its energy from the biological energy of the instinctual body (such as instincts for sex and aggression). In this traditional psychoanalytic theory, then, the conscious level of the person is rooted in, and motivated by, an unconscious level, as psychological life is ultimately rooted in biological forces.

Freudian psychoanalysis advanced psychology by legitimating the study of the meaningfulness of human actions, but it did so at the price of conceiving of conscious, worldly experience as being only a surface, subtended by unconscious, biological forces, mechanisms cut off from worldly involvement. By the late 1930s, some psychoanalysts had concluded this was too steep a price to pay. The first to formulate these objections systematically was Heinz Hartmann, whose writings between 1939 and 1950 advanced the argument for the autonomy of the ego as a structure of the personality independent of the domination of the unconscious id. It was Hartmann who gave to this protest movement the name “ego psychology.”

In the next generation of analysts, this movement found its most articulate voices: Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, and Erik H. Erikson. Writing from the 1940s through the 1980s, all contributed independently, with their own particular genius, to a perspective that grants to the ego a status much more significant than its role in Freudian psychoanalysis. For them, it is people’s relations with the world (and not their subterranean biological energy) that is the most important aspect of their psychological life. For this reason, these psychologists have also sometimes been known as the “social” or “interpersonal” analysts. While all four have unquestionably earned their enduring international reputations, Erik H. Erikson became the most well known due to his formulation of a powerful and comprehensive developmental theory to account for the growth of the ego throughout life. Freud had asserted that the ego was a weak aspect of the personality, whereas Hartmann posited a strong ego. However, there are wide individual differences in ego strength. Erikson demonstrated how ego strength emerges across stages of a person’s development and showed that its particular growth depends on the quality, at each stage, of a person’s relations with the world and with other people.

Erikson’s Shift to the Psychosocial Level

Freud had also sketched a developmental theory for psychoanalysis. Built on his view of the primacy of the intrapsychic id and its bodily source of energy, this theory focused on psychosexual development. For Freud, “sexual” means more than the usual notion of genital sexuality; it is a more general dynamic expression of bodily energy that manifests itself in different forms at different developmental stages. The adult (genital) stage of sexuality, reached at puberty, is the culmination and completion of one’s psychosexual development. Preceding that development, Freud saw four pregenital stages of psychosexual development: the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, and the latency stage. Hence, for this theory of psychosexual development, each stage is centralized as a stage by a particular expression of sexual or erogenous energy. In each stage, there is a particular mode of the bodying forth of this energy as desire, manifested by the unique bodily zone that becomes the erogenous zone of that specific stage. It is seen as erogenous because of that bodily zone’s capacity to be especially susceptible to stimulation or arousal, such that it becomes the prime source of bodily satisfaction and pleasure at that stage.

Erikson concluded that this psychosexual level was a valid but incomplete portrait of development. More than other proponents of ego psychology, he sought to work with Freud’s emphasis on the bodily zones while striving to include that vision within a larger, more encompassing framework. Erikson theorized that each bodily mode correlated with a psychological modality, one that implicated the person’s developing ego relations with the world. In particular, he emphasized one’s relations with other people as the most important “profile” of the world. He saw the psychosexual meaning of the various bodily zones grounded by changes in the person’s social existence at each stage. For that reason, Erikson named his approach a theory of psychosocial development and argued that the growth of the ego could not be reduced to changes in bodily energies. He demonstrated how the psychosexual dimension always implied a key human relation at the heart of each stage, and so the interpersonal could not be reduced to some intrapsychic cause but was itself the basis for the actual development of that stage.

The significance of this shift from the psychosexual level of development to the psychosocial one was enormous, but it can best be appreciated in the context of its depiction of each of the particular stages. One other impact was also strikingly noteworthy. Whereas Freud’s theory of psychosexual development saw the process as coming to an end with the person’s arrival at the genital stage (with puberty), Erikson realized that the growth of the ego in psychosocial development does not end there but continues in subsequent stages throughout the person’s life. In that way, he also transformed developmental psychology from its origins as merely a child psychology into a truly life-span psychology, a revision that became widely accepted.

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 on 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) 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. Babies’ tendency to mouth almost anything they can get hold of would indicate 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 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 term for 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, due to 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 regarding 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, so named 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 nor interest in intercourse at this time. Rather, for Freud, the sex organs become erogenous due to 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 a 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 it 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 also 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 meant by a sense of industry, which was 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.

Psychosocial Stages of Later Childhood

It is when the child arrives at Freud’s fifth stage that the psychosexual and psychosocial theories must part from their previous chronological company. Freud’s fifth stage is the genital stage: the completion of psychosexual development. With puberty, the person attains the same capacities and erogenous orientation as an adult and thus becomes as mature, psychosexually speaking, as any adult. For Erikson’s theory, however, the onset of puberty does not mark the completion of psychosocial development, which continues throughout life, but only its next stage: adolescence (ages twelve to twenty-one). Once more, the changing bodily zone implicates a changing social existence, for puberty is more than a merely chemical or hormonal change. More than the body, it is the whole person who is transformed by this flood of new issues and possibilities. This eruption provokes questions that had been taken for granted before. “Who am I becoming? Who am I to be?” appear, in small and large ways. The new adolescent must confront such new questions when on a date, at a party, or even when deciding what to wear to school that day. In other words, the adolescent ego has now developed a self-reflective loop, in which its own identity is now taken as an issue to be formed, a task that it must resolve for itself.

The formation of ego-identity can be an especially acute challenge in contemporary culture, where the traditional embeddedness in extended families and communities is too often no longer available to provide the network of identifications with which to resolve these questions. Instead, adolescent peer groups become the key psychosocial relationship for this stage. These reference groups offer the adolescent the prospect of trying on a new identity by embracing certain subgroup values, norms, and perspectives. This experimental phase is an acting “as if”—as if the person were who he or she is trying to be.

Optimally, adolescents will have the latitude to assume and discard prospective identities within the fluidity of what Erikson called a psychosocial moratorium—a time-out from having to bear the same weight of consequences for their choices that an adult would. For example, a girl pledging a lifetime commitment to a boyfriend at thirteen does not, in fact, entail the same level of commitment that a marriage would, nor does deciding to major in accounting on arriving at college actually bind one to follow through with a lifetime career as an accountant. With sufficient opportunity to explore and try out various tentative choices, adolescents will, optimally, conclude this stage by arriving at a more clarified sense of their own values and sense of direction. If this is not achieved, adolescents will either be left with a feeling of identity diffusion or have prematurely foreclosed on a possible identity that does not fit.

Psychosocial Stages of Adulthood

Beyond adolescence, Erikson also identified three psychosocial stages of adulthood: early adulthood, middle age, and old age. The first, roughly the period of one’s twenties and thirties, begins with the person’s moving out from under the insulating protection of the adolescent psychosocial moratorium. One’s choices (of marriage, career, family) cease to be “as if”; they are now profoundly real commitments with long-term impact. Making such commitments is not only a momentary event (such as saying “I do”) but also requires devoting oneself to living an ongoing and open-ended history. This new situation inaugurates the next psychosocial development, which Erikson names the crisis of intimacy versus isolation. Intimacy here has a broader range than its typical connotation of sexual relations: It encompasses the capacity to relate to another with fullness and mutuality. To be fully open with and to another person entails obvious risks—of being misunderstood or rejected—but with it comes the enormous gain of true love. To experience the closeness, sharing, and valuing of the other without boundaries is the hallmark of an infinite relationship (infinite, that is, not necessarily in duration but in depth). The relationship with a loved other is the evident psychosocial context of this growth. If it does not occur, then the early adult will come to experience instead a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. This consequence can accrue either through the failure to enter into a relationship or through the failure, within a relationship, to achieve intimacy. Some of the most terrible afflictions of isolation at this stage are within those marriages so lacking in intimacy that the couple are essentially isolated even though living together.

Beginning around age forty, a further stage of adult psychosocial development begins: middle age. The situation has once again changed. People are no longer merely starting out on their adulthood, but have by now achieved a place in the adult world. Typically, if they are going to have a family, they have got it by now; if a career, they are well launched by now. Indeed, middle age, the period from forty to sixty-five, marks the attainment of the height of a person’s worldly powers and responsibilities. Whatever worldly mountain one is going to climb in this lifetime, it is during middle age that one gets as high up it as one will go. The arrival at this new position opens the door to the next stage of development. Now the psychosocial growth will involve one’s social relations with the next generation, centered on the issue of generativity versus stagnation. The long plateau of middle age offers the opportunity to become helpful to those who follow that upward climb. These are, most immediately, one’s own children, but they also include the next generation in the community, on the job, in the profession, in the whole human family. The middle-aged adult is in the position of being the teacher, the mentor, the instituter, the creator, the producer—the generator. Having arrived at the peak of one’s own mountain, one no longer need be so concerned about placating someone else and so is able now to fully be oneself. To be an original, the middle-aged adult can also originate in the truest sense: to give of oneself to those who, following along behind, need that help. In this way, the person grows the specific ego-strength of care: an extending of oneself to others in an asymmetric way, giving without expectation of an equal return, precisely because one can. The failure to grow in this way results in stagnation—the disillusioned boredom of a life going nowhere. Some middle-aged adults, trying futilely to ward off this gnawing feeling of stagnation, hide behind desperate efforts of self-absorption, what Erikson called “treating oneself as one’s one and only child.”

By the late sixties, various changes mark the onset of the final stage of psychosocial development: old age. Retirement, becoming a grandparent, declining health, and even the increasingly frequent death of one’s own age-mates, all precipitate a new issue into the forefront: one’s own mortality. While people at every age know they are mortal, this knowledge has no particular impact on one’s life when one is younger because it is then so easily overlooked. In contrast, by old age, this knowledge of one’s mortality is now woven into the very fabric of one’s everyday life, in a way that it can no longer be evaded by imagining it postponed until some distant, abstract future.

Contemporary American society tends to avoid really confronting one’s being-toward-death. Some psychologists have gone so far as to say that death has replaced sex as the primary cultural taboo, hidden in hospital rooms and code words (“passed on,” “put to sleep,” “expired”). Fearing death, people find it difficult to grow old. If one is not available to the growth opportunities of this stage, one is likely to sink instead into despair—a feeling of regret over a life not lived. Often even one’s despair cannot be faced and is then hidden beneath feelings of disgust and bitterness: a self-contempt turned outward against the world.

Erikson points out that this final stage of life offers the opportunity for the ultimate growth of the ego. To embrace one’s mortality fully allows one to stand open-eyed at the edge of one’s life, a perspective from which it becomes possible to really see one’s life as a whole. One can then see, and own, one’s life as one’s own responsibility, admitting of no substitutes. It is this holistic vision of one’s life that Erikson calls integrity: the full integration of the personality. It is in this vision that people can actually realize that their own lives are also integrated with life as a whole, in a seamless web of interconnections. Thus, the ego finally finds its ultimate, transpersonal home within the whole of being. It is this perspective that opens the door to wisdom, the final growth.

Bibliography

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