How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 248
particularly between parents and children and grandchildren. Everyone
potentially affects everyone else's experiences as they pass through the
different crisis stages. Generativity, actually a named disposition within
one of the crisis stages (Generativity v Stagnation, stage seven), reflects
the significant relationship between adults and the best interests of
children - one's own children, and in a way everyone else's children the next generation, and all following generations.
Generations affect each other. A parent obviously affects the child's
psychosocial development, but in turn the parent's psychosocial
development is affected by their experience of dealing with the child
and the pressures produced. Same for grandparents. Again this helps
explain why as parents (or teachers or siblings or grandparents) we can
often struggle to deal well with a young person when it's as much as we
can do to deal with our own emotional challenges.
In some ways the development actually peaks at stage seven, since
stage eight is more about taking stock and coming to terms with how
one has made use of life, and ideally preparing to leave it feeling at
peace. The perspective of giving and making a positive difference for
future generations echoes Erikson's humanitarian philosophy, and it's
this perhaps more than anything else that enabled him to develop such
a powerful concept.
Freud's influence on erikson's theory
Erikson's psychosocial theory of the 'eight stages of human
development' drew from and extended the ideas of Sigmund Freud and
Freud's daughter Anna Freud, and particularly the four (or five,
depending on interpretation) Freudian stages of development, known
as Freud's psychosexual stages or Freud's sexual theory. These
concepts are fundamental to Freudian thinking and are outlined below
in basic terms relating to Erikson's psychosocial stages.
Freud's concepts, while influential on Erikson, are not however
fundamental to Erikson's theory, which stands up perfectly well in its
own right.
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