Conclusiones parciales

Dan McAdams

1. Describe the contributions that Anna Freud made to psychoanalysis.

2. Identify four ways in which Erikson extended Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.

3. Explain how Erikson’s theory enlarged our understanding of the ego.

4. Discuss the general characteristics of Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development.

5. Discuss each one of Erikson’s stages in terms of the Freudian psychosexual stage that it reflects, the emotional duality that it involves, and the particular ego strength that emerges from it.

6. Describe how Erikson explored the role of culture and history in shaping personality.

7. Discuss Erikson’s findings in the area of sex differences.

8. Discuss Erikson’s methods of research.

9. Describe empirical research based on Erikson’s theory.

10. Evaluate Erikson’s theory from the viewpoints of philosophy, science, and art.

11. Describe the contributions that McAdams makes to personality theory.

S

igmund Freud’s theory sparked a great deal of controversy, and some of his original followers sought to develop separate theories. Jung, Adler, Horney, and Fromm discarded a number of concepts that Freud considered crucial to psychoanalysis. Others, however, have worked within the mainstream of psychoanalysis to refine and update Freud’s ideas. The thought of Anna Freud and Erikson, discussed in this chapter, moves considerably beyond Freud but without abandoning his key concepts and principles. The focus changes from the study of the adult to the study of the child. The emphasis shifts from the id to the ego. There is an expansion of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic tool and greater appreciation of the role of society and culture in the development of personality.

This chapter briefly considers some inputs to psychoanalytic theory made by Anna Freud, focuses on the theory of her student Erik Erikson, and closes with the current contributions of Dan McAdams.

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

Anna, Freud’s youngest daughter, was her father’s intellectual heir, the only member of his family to follow in his profession. After her analysis by her own father, she worked closely with him as a highly skilled and respected colleague (cf. Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2008). After his death, she became an eminent lay psychoanalyst and international authority in her own right. Until her death in 1982, she was recognized as the guardian and elucidator of her father’s revolutionary doctrine. She enlarged the application of psychoanalysis to new areas: the study of children and the exploration of the ego. She became an advocate for children and adolescents, insisting that their best interests need to be kept in the forefront. In doing so, she extended the influence of psychoanalysis into areas such as pediatrics, child care, education, and family law (see Goldstein, Freud, &

Solnit, 1973, 1979; Midgley, 2008).

In her efforts to clarify psychoanalytic theory, Anna Freud introduced some genuinely new and creative ideas. Her observations of children extended beyond normal or dis-turbed children growing up in average homes and included children who had met with extraordinary circumstances such as war, physical handicaps, and parentless homes. Her research opened the way to a new era of research in psychoanalytic child psychology under the auspices of the Hampstead clinic, with applications to a wide area of concerns associated with child rearing (cf. Young-Bruehl, 2004).

Some of Anna Freud’s observations concerning children overturned previous notions of their reactions. For example, it had been widely assumed that children have an instinctive horror of combat, blood, and destruction and that war has a devastating effect on young children. However, her case studies of the effects of World War II bombings on British children, written in collaboration with Dorothy Burlingham, a long-time friend and col-league (see Burlingham, 1990; Jackson, 1991), revealed that although wartime may lead to negative reactions, the world of the child pivots primarily on the mother.

Anna Freud’s therapy stressed protective, supportive, and educational attitudes. She suggested how the classic features of adult psychoanalysis could be utilized with children four years old and upward, but she recognized that child analysis could not be conducted like the analysis of an adult. Classical techniques such as free association, the interpreta-tion of dreams, and analysis of the transference had to be changed to correspond with the child’s level of maturity. She saw the need for a long preparatory period in which the analyst is established as a trusted and indispensable figure in the child’s life. She also recognized that neurotic symptoms do not necessarily have the meaning in the life of a child that they have in the life of an adult. Her system of diagnosis, which conceives of

personality as arising out of a developmental sequence, permitted her to distinguish between less serious mani-festations of childhood distress, such as emotional pro-blems of childhood that would be outgrown, and more serious disorders that threatened to fixate a child at a particular stage of development and thus jeopardize opti-mal personality growth. The latter, but not the former, in Anna Freud’s opinion, mandated professional attention.

She produced a classification system of childhood symp-toms that reflects developmental issues, and she devised a formal assessment procedure known as a diagnostic profile. Such profiles have since been developed for infants, children, adolescents, and adults. The therapist uses the profile to organize and integrate the data that he or she acquires during a diagnostic assessment. The pro-file is intended to yield a complete picture of the various functionings of the patient’s personality and an indication of their developmental appropriateness.

Anna Freud used the term developmental line to refer to a series of id-ego interactions in which children decrease their dependence on external controls and increase ego mastery of themselves and their world (1965). Her six developmental lines stress the ego’s ability to cope with various internal, environmental, and interper-sonal situations, and they complement her father’s discussion of psychosexual develop-ment. As children grow, they progress from (1) dependency to emotional self-reliance, (2) sucking to rational eating, (3) wetting and soiling to bladder and bowel control, (4) irresponsibility to responsibility in body management, (5) play to work, and (6) egocen-tricity to companionship.

Anna Freud emphasized the importance of paying attention to a patient’s maturation level and noted with regret that adolescence was a “stepchild in psychoanalytic theory” (1958). She developed a concept of normality for the adolescent period, acknowledging that it is a period of disharmony but suggesting that the crisis it entails is “normative” and functional. She looked at the phenomena of impulsive acting out in child and adolescent analysis and clarified the types of acting out that are normal and that make a positive contribution during the pre-latency and adolescence periods. It is not uncommon, for example, for an adolescent to tem-porarily escape the demands of society by skipping school or running away. This behavior, however, can be compounded by overreacting to it or by perjoratively labeling it.

In addition, Anna Freud learned from her work with children that there are realistic limits to analysis. Certain constitutional or environmental factors may not be open to real change through analysis, though their effects may be reduced. While recognizing the greater impor-tance of environmental factors over internal ones in childhood disturbances, she was also impressed by the efforts of children to cope with and master extremely devastating situations.

Finally, Anna Freud systematized and elaborated on Freud’s discussion of the ego’s defenses.

Whereas Freud concentrated on exploring the unconscious drives of the id, his daughter real-ized that in order for these to emerge in an analysis, the ego must become aware of the defenses that it is using to prevent the material from reemerging into consciousness. The ego’s defenses may be inferred from observable behavior. Analysis of the defenses permits Anna Freud (seen here with her father) was her father’s intel-lectual heir and extended the interest of psychoanalysis to the study of the child and the exploration of the ego.

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Anna Freud (1895–1982)

one to understand the child’s life history and instinctual development. Anna Freud elaborated on the ego defenses outlined by her father and suggested some additional ones of her own (1946). She clarified the process of identification with the aggressor, in which a victim begins to react to his or her captor with gratitude and admiration. This phenomenon has since been recognized in prisoners of war and hostages. Anna Freud’s graphic case descriptions illustrat-ing these processes have become classic. Thus a schoolboy’s involuntary grimace caricatures the angry face of his teacher and testifies to his identification with the aggressor.

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

Erik H. Erikson was born on June 15, 1902, near Frankfurt, Germany, the product of an extra-marital relationship. He never knew his mother’s first husband or his birth father. His mother subsequently married a pediatrician, Theodore Homburger, who adopted Erik and gave him a last name. In an act that Erikson later called “loving deceit,” his parents concealed the fact of his adoption from him for several years. Thus the man who is famous for coining the term

“identity crisis” did himself experience a significant identity crisis. Not only did he have to struggle with the usual quest for psychological identity, he was also unsure of his biological identity. The problem was compounded by the fact that he was raised in a Jewish home but his genetic background was Danish. Young Erik’s Nordic features made him an outcast among his Jewish peers, ironically, at the same time his German classmates rejected him as a Jew. His resolution of the identity issue may have become apparent in 1939, when, in the process of becoming an American citizen, he added the surname by which we know him, assuming the identity of Erik Homburger Erikson. He also converted to Christianity.

Erikson was able to find his professional identity in Vienna, where he and Peter Blos, a theorist and researcher on adolescence, established a progressive, nongraded school that gave children optimal freedom within an appropriate structure. After a short time, Anna Freud asked Erikson if he would be interested in beginning analysis with her and becoming a child analyst. Over the next few years, Erikson established himself as a key figure in psycho-analysis, publishing articles on the Montessori philosophy of education and psychoanalysis.

The two complementary perspectives enabled Erikson to make a unique con-tribution to our understanding of child development.

Erikson left Vienna in 1933 and settled with his wife and family in Boston, where he became the city’s first child psychoana-lyst. In 1936 Erikson accepted a posi-tion in the Yale University Institute of Human Relations to teach at the medical school. In 1938, he learned of a unique opportunity to study child-rearing meth-ods among the Sioux in South Dakota.

Here he observed firsthand how child-hood events are shaped by society and its customs, a theme he was to stress again and again in his later writings.

In his discussion of psychosocial development, Erik Erikson makes explicit the social dimension implied in Sigmund Freud’s work.

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Between 1939 and 1960 Erikson held various positions in California and Massachusetts.

In 1960 Harvard University offered him the position of professor in spite of the fact that he had never received a university or college degree. Erikson was a popular speaker at colleges and universities throughout the United States. He died on May 12, 1994, following a brief illness.

Erikson extended Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in four main ways. First, he increased our understanding of the ego, showing how it is a creative problem solver that emerges out of the genetic, cultural, and historical context of each individual. Second, he elaborated on Freud’s stages of development, making explicit a social dimension that was implied in Freud’s theory but never clearly stated. Third, he extended our concept of development to embrace the entire life span, from infancy to old age. Fourth, he explored the impact of culture, society, and history on the developing personality and illustrated this in psychohistorical studies of famous people.

ANENHANCEDUNDERSTANDING OF THE EGO

While Erikson was training in Vienna, a lively debate was going on between Anna Freud and Heinz Hartmann, another influential psychoanalyst. Whereas Anna Freud tended to restrict the ego’s function to warding off drives, Hartmann was exploring the ego’s adaptive responses to its environment. Even though Anna Freud had been his training analyst, Erikson found himself attracted to Hartmann’s approach. As an educator, Erikson was interested in how one might strengthen and enrich the ego of young children. He found it difficult to conceive of the ego as adaptive if its role was limited to a set of defenses against inner drives.

In Erikson’s theory, the ego is the part of the mind that gives coherence to experi-ences, conscious or unconscious. Erikson agreed with Sigmund Freud that many aspects of ego functioning are unconscious, but he believed the ego has an overall unifying pur-pose that leads to consistent behavior and conduct. The ego has the positive role of maintaining effective performance, rather than just a negative role of avoiding anxiety.

Its defenses are adaptive as well as maladaptive (1974).

Erikson did not believe that we can best reconstruct the ego’s functions from an understanding of its dysfunctions. He elaborated on its adaptive capacities, its ability to deal with stress, to resolve vital conflict, to recuperate, and to contribute to identity for-mation. In the final analysis, Erikson defined the ego as a strong, vital, and positive force:

an organizing capacity of the individual that leads to “that strength which can reconcile discontinuities and ambiguities” (1975).

The development of the ego is clearly outlined in Erikson’s psychosocial stages of the life cycle. Ideally, at each stage the ego develops certain strengths or basic virtues that enable it to move forward. These ego strengths lay the foundation for a set of ethical rules based on ideals that we can strive for, since Erikson also conceived of the superego and human consciousness in terms of an evolutionary process.

THEPSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OFDEVELOPMENT

In his discussion of the psychosexual stages of development, Sigmund Freud concen-trated on their biological character and tended to neglect the social dimension. Neverthe-less, in Freud’s stages children are doing more than coming to terms with their own sexuality. For Erikson, children are trying to understand and relate to the world and to others. In effect, Erikson made explicit the social dimension implied in Freud’s work.

Each of Erikson’s psychosocial stages centers on an emotional polarity or conflict that children encounter at certain critical periods. New environmental demands introject positive and negative emotional components into the development of personality. Both emotional components are to some extent incorporated into the emerging person, but if the conflict is resolved satisfactorily, the positive component is reflected to a higher

Erik Erikson (1902–1994)

degree. If the conflict persists or is not adequately resolved, the negative component pre-dominates. Erikson’s first four stages correspond to Freud’s psychosexual stages (oral through latency). Erikson then subdivided the genital stage into four phases that repre-sent growth and development throughout maturity.

Erikson’s stages are epigenetic (from the Greek words epi, “upon,” and genesis, “emer-gence”): One stage develops on top of another in a sequential and hierarchical pattern.

At each successive level the human personality becomes more complex. Erikson stressed the prospective features of the life cycle, and he amended the logic of psychoanalysis so that early events are seen not only in terms of their contributions to later development but also as themselves directed by potentials that do not flower until later.

Erikson’s psychosocial stages do not occur within a strict chronological framework. As in fetal development, however, each aspect of psychosocial development has a critical period of readiness during which, if it does not flourish, it is likely to flounder. In addi-tion, the stages progress in a cumulative rather than a linear fashion. The behaviors of one stage do not disappear with the successive stage (1969).

Erikson made psychoanalytic concepts more consistent with contemporary scientific findings. His psychosocial stages are a gradual series of decisive encounters with the environment—interactions between biological development, psychological abilities, cog-nitive capacities, and social influences. Erikson saw the person as a way of being in the world. Thus the first stage, rather than a cathexis of libido onto an oral zone, is a com-plex of experiences centered in the mouth.

Each of the eight stages entails its own life crisis, a crucial period in which the indi-vidual cannot avoid a decisive turn one way or the other. Each stage also provides new opportunities for particular ego strengths, or basic virtues, to develop. These psychosocial gains result from the ego’s successful adaptation to its environment and must be nurtured and reaffirmed continuously (see also Berk & Andersen, 2000; Green, Richardson, Lago, &

Schatten-Jones, 2001; Pinquart & Sorensen, 2001; Roberts & Del Vecchio, 2000).

The emotional duality of trust versus mistrust is the key consideration of the first stage, which corresponds to Freud’s oral, sensory, and kinesthetic one (Erikson, 1963). The basic psychosocial attitude to be learned at this stage is whether or not you can trust the world. For a protracted period of time children are highly dependent on others for their care. Certain frustrations are inevitable and socially meaningful, but too much of either frustration or indulgence may have negative effects. Basic trust implies a perceived correlation between one’s needs and one’s world. If infants receive unreliable, inadequate, or rejecting care, they will perceive their world as indifferent or hostile, and they will develop a high degree of mistrust. The danger lies in the extremes of trust and mistrust.

This crisis is not permanently resolved during the first year or two of life, but a founda-tion is laid that influences the subsequent course of development.

An appropriate balance of trust and mistrust leads to the development of the ego strength hope, a basic human virtue without which we are unable to survive. Hope repre-sents a persistent conviction that our wishes can be satisfied in spite of disappointment and failures (1964). Hope is the basis of faith, reflected in mature commitments.

Erikson’s second psychosocial stage, autonomy versus shame and doubt, arises during the second and third years of life and corresponds to the anal-muscular stage in Freud’s psychosexual scheme (1963). The primary emotional duality here is that of control over the body and bodily activities as opposed to a tendency for shame and doubt. “Just when a

child has learned to trust his mother and to trust the world, he must become self-willed and must take chances with his trust in order to see what he, as a trustworthy individual, can will” (Erikson, as cited in Evans, 1967). The struggle for autonomy is not limited to sessions on the toilet but extends to many other areas of life as the ego begins to establish psychoso-cial independence. Toddlers, who are making rapid gains in neuromuscular maturation, verbalization, and social discrimination, begin to explore independently and interact with

child has learned to trust his mother and to trust the world, he must become self-willed and must take chances with his trust in order to see what he, as a trustworthy individual, can will” (Erikson, as cited in Evans, 1967). The struggle for autonomy is not limited to sessions on the toilet but extends to many other areas of life as the ego begins to establish psychoso-cial independence. Toddlers, who are making rapid gains in neuromuscular maturation, verbalization, and social discrimination, begin to explore independently and interact with

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