Book
The Life Cycle Completed: A Review
A brief late review in which Erikson restates his scheme of the human life cycle. He sets out again the epigenetic order of the eight psychosocial stages, in which each stage has its own time of ascendancy while resting on how the stages before it were met, and names the basic strength that each stage yields. Compared with his earlier statements, the review gives closer attention to old age, the last stage of the cycle, and to the relation between the generations. An extended version, with Joan M. Erikson as co-author, was later published by Norton.
Main ideas
- The eight psychosocial stages follow an epigenetic order: each has its own time of ascendancy and depends on how the earlier stages were resolved.
- Each stage yields a basic strength when its crisis is met.
- Old age, the last stage of the cycle, receives closer attention than in Erikson's earlier statements.
- The life cycle is bound up with the relation between the generations.
What it shows
- 1950
Erik Erikson introduced Psychosocial development
Erikson set out the eight stages in the chapter "Eight Ages of Man" of Childhood and Society (1950), and restated the scheme and its epigenetic principle late in life in The Life Cycle Completed (1982).