How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 247
He continued (in rather complicated language, hence paraphrasing)
that at no stage can a 'goodness' be achieved which is impervious to
new conflicts, and that to believe so is dangerous and inept.
The crisis stages are not sharply defined steps. Elements tend to
overlap and mingle from one stage to the next and to the preceding
stages. It's a broad framework and concept, not a mathematical formula
which replicates precisely across all people and situations.
Erikson was keen to point out that the transition between stages is
'overlapping'. Crisis stages connect with each other like inter-laced
fingers, not like a series of neatly stacked boxes. People don't suddenly
wake up one morning and be in a new life stage. Changes don't happen
in regimented clear-cut steps. Changes are graduated, mixed-together
and organic. In this respect the 'feel' of the model is similar to other
flexible human development frameworks (for example, Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross's 'Grief Cycle', and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs).
Where a person passes unsuccessfully through a psychosocial crisis
stage they develop a tendency towards one or other of the opposing
forces (either to the syntonic or the dystonic, in Erikson's language),
which then becomes a behavioural tendency, or even a mental problem.
In crude terms we might call this 'baggage' or a 'hang-up', although
perhaps avoid such terms in serious work. I use them here to illustrate
that Erikson's ideas are very much related to real life and the way
ordinary people think and wonder about things.
Erikson called an extreme tendency towards the syntonic (first
disposition) a 'maladapation', and he identified specific words to
represent the maladapation at each stage. He called an extreme
tendency towards the dystonic (second disposition) a 'malignancy', and
again he identified specific words to represent the malignancy at each
stage. More under 'Maladapations' and 'Malignancies'.
Erikson emphasised the significance of and 'mutuality' and
'generativity' in his theory. The terms are linked. Mutuality reflects the
effect of generations on each other, especially among families, and
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