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PARTISAN REVIEW
From early on, Erikson appeared to be concerned about his
place in the development of psychoanalytic theory . David Rapaport,
in his introduction to Erikson's
Identity and the Life Cycle,
explicitly at–
tempted to insure him a "firm place in ego psychology." According to
Rapaport, until the 1930s, "... the psychosocial implications of
reality and object relations remained unexplained theoretically. " By
the 1930s, that omission in theory was so evident that there were
several simultaneous attempts to fill it. Rapaport favored those pro–
posed by Erikson, Hartmann, Kris, and Lowenstein because he
believed they showed an awareness of pre-existing roots in psycho–
analytic theory . He felt that other attempts, such as those by Horney,
Kardiner , and Sullivan, showed no such awareness . Put another
way, Rapaport favored those which appeared to preserve libido
theory. And he favored Erikson over Hartmann because Hartmann's
theory of adaptation failed to provide a specific psychosocial theory.
In contrast, Erikson focused his account of the epigenesis of ego on a
theory of reality relationships .
Erikson outlined the sequence of phases of psychosocial devel–
opment and attempted to relate them to psychosexual development ,
thereby laying the groundwork for the study of what he called "ego
epigenesis." The sequences of psychosocial development he proposed
were intended to parallel those of libidinal development; however,
they were said to extend beyond the resolution of the Oedipal com–
plex and span the entire life cycle. Erikson proposed that each phase
of the life cycle was characterized by a phase-specific developmental
iask which had to be solved during that period. He described each
phase in terms of either a successful or unsuccessful resolution. The
dialectics in Erickson's epigenetic scheme are described in eight
stages: basic trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and
doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity
versus identity diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity ver–
sus stagnation, and integrity versus despair.
While acknowledging Erikson's insight into the importance of
ego development and emphasizing the necessity of a developmental
theory, subsequent investigators and theorists have pointed out the
ambiguous status of Erikson's developmental scheme. There are
three major critiques.
First, although he has developed an interesting set of paired
terms to describe presumed sequential struggles in development,
they are far from compelling. He has never systematically revealed
the observations from which his propositions derive. Put simply,
Erikson's stages are not clearly based on empirical formulations .
