How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 272

theories, anyone can find themselves revisiting and having to resolve
needs (or crisis feelings or experiences) from earlier years.
Further thoughts and suggestions about correlations between Maslow
and Erikson are welcome.
Erikson's model - maladaptations and malignancies (negative
outcomes)
Later Erikson developed clearer ideas and terminology - notably
'Maladaptations' and 'Malignancies' - to represent the negative
outcomes arising from an unhelpful experience through each of the
crisis stages.
In crude modern terms these negative outcomes might be referred to as
'baggage', which although somewhat unscientific, is actually a very apt
metaphor, since people tend to carry with them through life the
psychological outcomes of previously unhelpful experiences.
Psychoanalysis, the particular therapeutic science from which Erikson
approached these issues, is a way to help people understand where the
baggage came from, and thereby to assist the process of dumping it.
To an extent these negative outcomes can also arise from repeating or
revisiting a crisis, or more realistically the essential aspects of a crisis,
since we don't actually regress to a younger age, instead we revisit the
experiences and feelings associated with earlier life.
This chart is laid out with the crisis in the centre to aid appreciation
that 'maladaptations' develop from tending towards the extreme of the
first ('positive') disposition in each crisis, and 'malignancies' develop
from tending towards the extreme of the second ('negative') disposition
in each crisis.
A maladaptation could be seen as 'too much of a good thing'. A
malignancy could be seen as not enough.
In later writings malignancies were also referred to as 'antipathies'.

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