Erikson's eight stages, and the identity crisis he named

Erikson's stages of development are eight stages of psychosocial development, each built around a crisis between two tendencies: trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus identity confusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair. Erik Erikson set them out in 1950 in the chapter "Eight Stages of Man" of his book Childhood and Society, and they run from infancy to old age.

Most lists give the eight pairs with ages and a strength for each, and stop there. This article gives that table, then the points such lists rush: what the ages rest on, what Erikson meant by the epigenetic principle, and where the phrase "identity crisis" came from.

• The order of the stages is part of the theory. The ages are not: the text of the 1950 chapter gives none, and sources draw them differently. Stage 2 runs from 1 to 3 years in OpenStax, from 1½ to 3 in the APA Dictionary of Psychology and from 1 to 2 on English Wikipedia.
• The strengths (hope, will, purpose and the rest) are not listed in the 1950 chapter either. Erikson wrote of "vital virtues" in 1968.
• In Erikson's own definition, a crisis is "not a threat of catastrophe, but a turning point".
• His account of the term "identity crisis" starts in a Second World War clinic for veterans, not in a study of teenagers.
• The ninth stage, for people in their eighties and nineties, was written by Joan Erikson and published in 1997. It is not part of the original eight.

The eight stages at a glance

The table takes its ages and short descriptions from OpenStax, and its strengths from The Life Cycle Completed, the later book by Erik and Joan Erikson.

Where the eight stages came from

Erik Erikson (1902 to 1994) started from Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory. OpenStax sums up what he changed: he emphasised the social nature of development, not its sexual nature, and proposed that personality development continues through the whole lifespan, where Freud held that personality is shaped in childhood. The ego, Freud's name for the part of the mind that deals with reality, stays central: see our guide to the id, ego and superego.

The 1950 chapter still speaks in Freud's vocabulary for its first four stages: the "biting stage", "anal-muscular maturation", "infantile genitality" and "the oncoming latency period". In The Life Cycle Completed, Erikson recalls Anna Freud's "Kinderseminar" among the clinical seminars of his student years, and her 1936 book on the ego's defences is covered in our guide to defence mechanisms. Childhood and Society is also more than theory: its second part reports on childhood among the Sioux and the Yurok.

The strengths appear in Erikson's later books. The 1950 chapter has no list of them. In Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968), Erikson claims for the life cycle "a generational principle which would tend to perpetuate a series of vital virtues from hope in infancy to wisdom in old age". In The Life Cycle Completed, he and Joan Erikson name the eight.

The stages one by one

1. Trust versus mistrust: infancy

The first stage is about whether the world can be relied on. In 1968 Erikson defined trust as "an essential trustfulness of others as well as a fundamental sense of one's own trustworthiness". OpenStax illustrates it with the caregiver's response: caregivers who respond sensitively to an infant's needs help the baby see the world as "a safe, predictable place", while unresponsive caregivers "can engender feelings of anxiety, fear, and mistrust".

In 1950 Erikson wrote that the amount of trust "does not seem to depend on absolute quantities of food or demonstrations of love, but rather on the quality of the maternal relationship". The APA Dictionary and OpenStax say primary caregiver or caregivers where the 1950 text says mother. Attachment theory also begins in infancy, but it is a separate theory, covered in the four attachment styles.

2. Autonomy versus shame and doubt: toddlerhood

Erikson built this stage around two opposite actions, holding on and letting go, and defined shame as being "completely exposed and conscious of being looked at". OpenStax calls it the "me do it" stage and gives the example of a 2-year-old who wants to choose her clothes and dress herself.

3. Initiative versus guilt: preschool

In planning and starting activities, in fantasy and play, the child learns to believe in the ability to pursue goals, according to the APA Dictionary. If those pursuits often fail or are criticised, guilt can follow. Erikson named the danger of the stage as "a sense of guilt over the goals contemplated and the acts initiated".

4. Industry versus inferiority: school age

Erikson wrote that the child "now learns to win recognition by producing things". The danger at this stage, he wrote, lies in "a sense of inadequacy and inferiority". OpenStax's examples are the areas where children measure themselves against their peers: schoolwork, sports, social activities and family life. They either develop "a sense of pride and accomplishment" in them or "feel inferior and inadequate when they don't measure up".

5. Identity versus identity confusion: adolescence

This is the stage the term "identity crisis" is attached to. In 1950 Erikson described the sense of ego identity as "the accrued confidence that the inner sameness and continuity are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others, as evidenced in the tangible promise of a 'career.'" The APA Dictionary adds that the stage, also called identity versus role confusion, may include a psychosocial moratorium: a period that permits experimentation with social roles before a stable identity forms. OpenStax describes adolescents as struggling with questions such as "Who am I?" and "What do I want to do with my life?" while most "try on many different selves to see which ones fit".

6. Intimacy versus isolation: early adulthood

Erikson ties this stage to the one before it: "it is only as young people emerge from their identity struggles that their egos can master the sixth stage, that of intimacy". Avoiding closeness out of a "fear of ego loss", he wrote, "may lead to a deep sense of isolation and consequent self-absorption". The APA Dictionary describes a stage that runs through courtship and early family life, in which individuals "must learn to share and care without losing themselves".

7. Generativity versus stagnation: middle adulthood

Erikson apologised for the word: "I apologize for creating a new and not even pleasant term." He defined generativity as "primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation". OpenStax lists volunteering, mentoring and raising children as examples. The stage describes a concern Erikson saw in adults. It is not a checklist for a good middle age.

8. Integrity versus despair: late adulthood

Erikson described ego integrity as "the acceptance of one's one and only life cycle as something that had to be", and despair as the feeling "that the time is short, too short for the attempt to start another life". Both poles describe a way of looking back. In OpenStax's account, people who are proud of their accomplishments "can look back on their lives with few regrets", while those who feel their life has been wasted focus on what "would have", "should have" and "could have" been. Neither is a score.

Why the ages and names differ between sources

The APA column comes from the dictionary's entries on basic trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority and intimacy versus isolation. The sources agree on childhood within a year or so and disagree about adulthood: English Wikipedia ends early adulthood at 44, and OpenStax ends it at 29.

The reason is in the theory. In the text of the 1950 chapter, the stages are tied to phases such as the "ambulatory stage", not to ages. In the ninth-stage chapter of The Life Cycle Completed, Joan Erikson recalls that when the eight stages were first charted, it seemed obvious that, apart from the infant's arrival date, the timing of human development varies so much that "no age specifications could be validated for each stage independent of social criteria and pressures".

For an exam, use the figures in your course text, and treat the sequence as the part that matters. A parent who wants to know whether a particular child is developing well should ask a paediatrician or another health professional, not compare the child with a table of stages.

The names move too. The 1950 chapter calls the fifth stage "Identity vs. Role Diffusion" and the eighth "Ego Integrity vs. Despair". The Life Cycle Completed uses identity versus identity confusion and generativity versus self-absorption, and OpenStax writes "identity vs. confusion". These labels name the same stages, so use the pair your course uses.

How the stages build on each other

Erikson took the idea of an order from embryology. In 1968 he called it the epigenetic principle, "which is derived from the growth of organisms in utero":

The principle does not say that a strength is absent until its stage arrives. Erikson wrote that "each item exists in some form before 'its' decisive and critical time normally arrives". A baby may show something like autonomy from the start, he notes, in the way "he angrily tries to wriggle his hand free when tightly held", but normally it is not until the second year that the whole critical alternative between being autonomous and being dependent appears.

Textbook summaries often sound like an exam. OpenStax says that failure to master these tasks "leads to feelings of inadequacy". Erikson's wording differs in two ways. First, he used "crisis" in a developmental sense, "to connote not a threat of catastrophe, but a turning point, a crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential".

The second difference is that his chart is read in both directions. In The Life Cycle Completed, "each step (even wisdom) is grounded in all the previous ones", while the maturing of each strength "gives new connotations to all the 'lower' and already developed stages as well as to the higher and still developing ones". A later stage can change what an earlier one meant. That is a different picture from a ladder climbed once.

Where the term "identity crisis" comes from

The usual story gives the term to adolescence. Erikson's own account, in the prologue of Identity: Youth and Crisis, is different. He writes that "identity crisis" was "first used, if I remember correctly, for a specific clinical purpose in the Mt. Zion Veterans' Rehabilitation Clinic during the Second World War". Most of the patients, he says, had "through the exigencies of war lost a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity", and he spoke of a loss of "ego identity".

The adolescent meaning came afterwards. Erikson saw the same disturbance in severely conflicted young people, and he writes: "we have learned to ascribe a normative 'identity crisis' to the age of adolescence and young adulthood". The APA Dictionary defines the term as a phase of life marked by experimentation, changing or conflicting values and a lack of commitment to one's usual roles, and says that Erikson claimed such a period is natural and desirable for adolescents.

Erikson, Freud and Piaget compared

Piaget's theory is about how children think, and Erikson's is about how a person's sense of self forms in relation to others, so they do not compete for the same ground. Our guide to Piaget's four stages covers the cognitive side, including what later research changed about the ages.

What holds up and what is unclear

The frame has lasted. Erikson's claim that development continues through the whole lifespan is the point OpenStax draws out against Freud, and the APA Dictionary still defines identity crisis and the identity stage in his terms.

The wording is less secure. In The Life Cycle Completed, Erikson quotes David Rapaport's verdict on his theory, from 1959: "the conceptual status of this theory's terms is so far unclear". Syed and McLean, in a 2017 preprint, write that Erikson "mixed detailed treatments with vague proclamations" and that this has led some to call his work "Rorschach-like", since readers interpret his words according to their own interests and views.

One early test of the identity stage is the study by James Marcia, published in 1966. It described, measured and validated four modes of reacting to the late-adolescent identity crisis, defined by whether a person had been through a crisis and made a commitment in occupation and ideology. The statuses were assigned to 86 male college students by interview, so the study tested one stage in one sample, not the order of the eight.

Learning the eight stages in order

The order is the part to learn, and it has a hazard: five of the eight crises begin with the same letter. Initiative, industry, identity, intimacy and integrity are all I-words, in stages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8. Learn each with its opposite (guilt, inferiority, confusion, isolation and despair) and its strength (purpose, competence, fidelity, love and wisdom). The strengths alone form a chain you can say in one breath: hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, wisdom.

Stages are the kind of list a memory palace suits best. Our guide to the method of loci calls it most useful for lists with a fixed order, and shows where it stops: the images keep the names, not the meanings. Terms that are easy to confuse are easier to hold apart when you learn them in groups.

This topic is a small set of related terms: crisis, epigenetic principle, identity crisis, moratorium, generativity and integrity. In Psychology World, you look up a term and save it to one of your own lists. Then you drill the list as flashcards, by typing the answer, or as multiple-choice questions once the list has four or more terms. The four steps of the learning loop and what each study mode does are on the home page.