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FeistFeist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

II. Psychodynamic

Theories

9. Erikson: PostFreudian

Theory

253 The McGrawHill

Companies, 2009

only body we will ever have. The ego idealrepresents the image we have of ourselves

in comparison with an established ideal; it is responsible for our being satisfied or

dissatisfied not only with our physical self but with our entire personal identity.Ego

identity is the image we have of ourselves in the variety of social roles we play. Al-

though adolescence is ordinarily the time when these three components are chang-

ing most rapidly, alterations in body ego, ego ideal, and ego identity can and do take

place at any stage of life.

Societys Influence

Although inborn capacities are important in personality development, the ego

emerges from and is largely shaped by society. Eriksons emphasis on social and his-

torical factors was in contrast with Freuds mostly biological viewpoint. To Erikson,

the ego exists as potential at birth, but it must emerge from within a cultural envi-

ronment. Different societies, with their variations in child-rearing practices, tend to

shape personalities that fit the needs and values of their culture. For example, Erik-

son (1963) found that prolonged and permissive nursing of infants of the Sioux na-

tion (sometimes for as long as 4 or 5 years) resulted in what Freud would call oral

personalities: that is, people who gain great pleasure through functions of the mouth.

The Sioux place great value on generosity, and Erikson believed that the reassurance

resulting from unlimited breast-feeding lays the foundation for the virtue of gen-

erosity. However, Sioux parents quickly suppress biting, a practice that may con-

tribute to the childs fortitude and ferocity. On the other hand, people of the Yurok

nation set strict regulations concerning elimination of urine and feces, practices that

tend to develop anality, or compulsive neatness, stubbornness, and miserliness. In

European American societies, orality and anality are often considered undesirable

traits or neurotic symptoms. Erikson (1963), however, argued that orality among the

Sioux hunters and anality among the Yurok fishermen are adaptive characteristics

that help both the individual and the culture. The fact that European American cul-

ture views orality and anality as deviant traits merely displays its own ethnocentric

view of other societies. Erikson (1968, 1974) argued that historically all tribes or na-

tions, including the United States, have developed what he called a pseudospecies:

that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated by a particular society that it is some-

how chosen to be the human species. In past centuries, this belief has aided the sur-

vival of the tribe, but with modern means of world annihilation, such a prejudiced

perception (as demonstrated by Nazi Germany) threatens the survival of every

nation.

One of Eriksons principal contributions to personality theory was his exten-

sion of the Freudian early stages of development to include school age, youth, adult-

hood, and old age. Before looking more closely at Eriksons theory of ego develop-

ment, we discuss his view of how personality develops from one stage to the next.

Epigenetic Principle

Erikson believed that the ego develops throughout the various stages of life accord-

ing to an epigenetic principle, a term borrowed from embryology. Epigenetic de-

velopment implies a step-by-step growth of fetal organs. The embryo does not begin

as a completely formed little person, waiting to merely expand its structure and

Chapter 9 Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory 247