Erik Erikson created the theory of Psychosocial Development. According to this theory, individuals experience a social crisis at each stage of development. Whether the crisis is resolved positively or negatively at each stage will affect a person’s personality and how he or she develops throughout life.
There are 8 stages in Erikson’s theory:
Daniel Levinson was a psychologist who investigated individual development and proposed a Season’s of Life theory.
In this theory there are 4 seasons, and each season lasts approximately 25 years.
4 Developmental Periods/Seasons:
During each season there are many transitions that individuals need to make.
A theme throughout all of Levinson’s adult stages is the concept of a dream. Essentially the dream describes one’s ideal life, and usually includes ideas about work, family and community roles.
People often compare where they are at in life with their dream. This can also lead to feelings of satisfaction (or not) with their "place" in the world.
Abraham Maslow took a humanist perspective on development and proposed that human motivation is based on a hierarchy of needs.
There are 5 interdependent stages of human needs that must be fulfilled in order for a person to reach self-actualization.
The stages are presented in a hierarchy and move from the bottom of the pyramid, upwards.
(beginning at 1 moving to 5):
5. Self-Actualization.
4. Esteem.
3. Belongingness and Love.
2. Safety.
1. Physiological.
Individuals are capable of moving up a level once the needs at each stage are met.
Often individuals fail to move up the hierarchy because they have unmet needs at a particular stage. Some people end up moving back and forth between levels depending on their life circumstances.
Maslow indicated that very few people ever make it to the top of the hierarchy, the self-actualization stage.
Sigmund Freud developed the psychosexual theory to explain how a child’s personality developed.
This is a well-known and controversial theory because his work was largely centred around human sexuality, and although it was centred on child development, he mainly worked with troubled adults.
Freud believed that a child’s personality formed by passing through several different stages. Each stage was marked by pleasure-seeking energies, and satisfying desires and urges was of central importance and the driving force behind the behaviour. One moves throughout the stages by learning to satisfy the fixations of the libido at each stage.
According to this theory, personality is formed early in life by experiences and continues to influence actions throughout life.
-Oral (Birth to 1 year).
-Anal(1 to 3 years).
-Phallic (3 to 6 years).
-Latency (6 to puberty).
-Genital (puberty to death).
George Herbert Mead developed a concept of self, and proposed that it that was determined by one’s interactions with others. These ideas gave rise to symbolic interactionism in the 20th century.
He thought that how people perceive themselves is largely determined by how they think other people view them. He also suggested that people’s perception of self is impacted by a number of assumptions they make about themselves and how others view them.
According to this theory, people base their actions on the meanings they associate through their interactions and interpretations of objects, events, ideas and other people.
Different people assign unique meanings to things based on their own experiences.