ABSTRACT

Scores on the six scales of psychosocial development represent outcomes of a sequential series of normative crises (Erikson, 1963) that occur during the years from infancy through early adulthood. The scales, however, do not examine those significant life events from a developmental perspective but instead as they exhibit themselves in adult respondents’ attitudes, beliefs, and value statements. Thus, they measure in the adult the persisting dynamics of earlier gains and losses that cast shadows resembling residues of the normative crisis resolutions.