Emotional health Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Emotional health - Essay Example Erickson’s Eight Stages of Psycho-Social Development: States that the individual has to undergo eight stages of development, in order for them to become integrated into society (Erikson 359-396). Erickson focuses on eight stages in total; however the first five are aimed at childhood, whereas the last three are classifications of changes which take place throughout the rest of the individual’s lifetime. In summary, Erickson was concerned with the individual’s adaptation to society. Let’s now compare this to Sigmund Freud, and his approach, which is centered towards the individual’s adaptation to their own psychic sphere. According to Freud, the young child first develops an oral fixation, whereby as a baby and then toddler, everything goes into the mouth. They then move onto the anal stage, during toilet training, and finally at around five to seven years of age they undergo what is known as the Oedipus complex, whereby the boy fears castration, at the hands of their father, for lusting after the mother; and whereby the young girl accepts the reality that she has already been castrated. Either way, the phallic stage represents an acceptance of external authority, and a reordering of the individual’s psychic World, so that they become emotionally well regulated. Erickson versus Freud: Interestingly, when we compare, Freud to Erickson, we can clearly see that both theorists are attempting to explain the emotional developmental stages of the individual, and that for Erickson the focus is on adaptation to external challenges; whereas with Freud the focus is upon internal adaptation within the psychic reality of the individual, to the external reality which faces them. While the focus might be slightly different, the inference is the same, that a healthy individual has to come to terms with the society, in which