Professional Documents
Culture Documents
develop in 4
different aspects
of growth. The
areas are all
inter-connected,
so when one is
affected it may
influence the Social
others.
Physical
Intellectual
After graduating high school, Erik focused on becoming an artist, wandering totally
carefree around Europe with a friend, struggling with the question “who am I?”. He
eventually began teaching art at a school run by a friend of Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud’s
daughter), he gathered a certificate in Montessori education and one from the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society. He was psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud herself, and studied
Freud’s work carefully. While Freud believed in “destiny”, Erikson believed that a child’s
“environment” had a great influence on their development.
With the advent of World War II he immigrated to the United States. He later taught at
Yale, and later still at the University of California at Berkeley. It was during this period of
time that he did his famous studies of modern life among the Lakota and the Yurok.
When he became an American citizen, he officially changed his name to Erik Erikson. No-
one seems to know where he got the name! Erikson was known and praised for his
theories on pyscho-social development, personality, and identity crisis.
Erik Erikson refined the work of Sigmund Freud, creating the 8 stage theory of
psycho-social development. This theory is widely accepted as “fact” in the
psychology community today. The first 6 stages deal with the developing child and
young adult. Freud outlined the stages of his theory in a manner imitating
“developmental tasks”. In other words, every human being, in order to successfully
deal with life in society, will pass through each stage…preferably in order and
preferably during a specific timeframe. If an individual does not “accomplish the
task” in one of the 8 stages, difficulties emotionally and socially will undoubtedly
show up later in life.
Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in Switzerland. His
father was a country parson. He was surrounded by a fairly
well educated extended family, including quite a few
clergymen and some eccentrics as well. The elder Jung
started Carl on Latin when he was six years old, beginning a
long interest in language and literature -- especially ancient
literature. Besides most modern western European languages,
Jung could read several ancient ones.
Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who didn't care much for school, and especially couldn't take
competition. He went to boarding school where he found himself the object of a lot of jealous
harassment. He began to use sickness as an excuse, developing an embarrassing tendency to faint
under pressure.
Although his first career choice was archeology, he went on to study medicine. While working under
a neurologist, he settled on psychiatry as his career. He invented the psychiatric tool known as “word
association”, and developed a theory on personality. His theory is the basis for most accepted
personality identifiers used today such as the Kiersey or Myers-Briggs Personality Inventories.
Temperament is the "nature" part of our personality, the part that is determined by
our genes or pre-natal conditions. Temperament is a person's unique responses
to the people, events, and conditions in our world.
Everyone, at every age, level of intelligence, or level of ability — has a natural
tendency to respond to things, express themselves, and use their abilities in
varying degrees. Temperament is not “right” or “wrong”. We may be able to alter
how we display our temperament to others (personality), but we cannot change
our actual temperament. Temperament can be reflected in several ways...
Rhythmicity: people vary in the regularity,
predictability, and strictness of personal habits
Approach/Withdrawal: interest in meeting new people,
seeing new places, and doing new things
Sensory Threshold: tolerance for sensory stimuli,
i.e. volume of music, flavors of food, etc.
Adaptability: how flexible people are to change
Attention Span: degree of persistence
Distractibility: level of concentration
Activity Level: calm or hectic
Mood: optimists or pessimists
Reactions: intense or less intense
First born:
Perfectionistic
Reliable
Well-organized
Hard driving
Critical
Natural Leader
Middle child:
Mediator
Avoids conflict
Independent
Diplomatic
Loyal
Has many friends
Baby: 1870 - 1937
Charming
Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler,
Attention-seeker
theorized on the personality influences
Affectionate
attributed to birth order. These
People person
characteristics would be developed within,
Manipulative
and as the result of the family environment
Determined/stubborn
rather than as a inborn temperament.
Research indicates that only-children may be slightly less affiliative than their
peers, belonging to fewer organizations, having fewer friends, and leading a
less intense social life. They do, however, have a comparable number of close
friends, assume leadership positions in clubs, and feel satisfied and happy
with their lives. Parents of an only-child have higher expectations, which may
result in higher pressure. Only-children and first-born children demonstrate a
less cooperative interactive style than do other children; especially in the area
of sharing. They are often described as self-motivated, thorough, adult-like
early in life, high achiever, can’t bear to fail, and avid readers. They are rated
as highly “likeable” by peers.