ABSTRACT
Erik Erikson’s first teaching post in America was at Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he spent many years cultivating the view that personality could develop from an interaction of the self and society. Evidence to support Erikson’s belief that establishing an identity in adolescence is crucial for later successful relationships, comes from a longitudinal study by S. Kahn, G. Zimmerman, Csikszentmihalye and J.W. Getzels. Erikson believed that personality operates by the epigenetic principle, which means the development of personality follows a predetermined order of stages. Erikson believes that throughout life people evolve simultaneously in three ways: biologically, socially and psychologically. Erikson is one of the main advocates for the stage approach to personality development. A further criticism of Erikson’s theory revolves around the issue of generalisability. Erikson claims that his theory of psychosocial stages applies equally to males and females, yet the theory is based on studies involving only males.
