Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | J | Journal of Phenomenological Psychology

Erikson on Development in Adulthood: New Insights from Unpublished Papers.

Article Excerpt
Hoare, C. H. (2002). Erikson on Development in Adulthood: New Insights from Unpublished Papers. New York: Oxford University Press, 284 pp., ISBN 0-19-513175-4.

Allow me to begin, reader, by stating that Carol Hren Hoare's Erikson on Development in Adulthood is one of the best and meticulously researched scholarly works I have read on Erikson's work.

In the large Eriksonian life-span scheme, says Hoare, the essence of developmental movement for adults is outward, forward, and upwards toward "a conscious, ethical concern for others and a deeper sense of spiritual self" (p. 10). Erikson selected giant identity models and heroic examples of ethical adults for he believed in adult's "self-perfectibility." Becoming a childlike, playing adult was for Erikson an ideal picture of the healthy adult. Erikson wanted to answer the question of what it means to be a developmentally mature adult. "Erikson maintained that the caring, generative person was the developmental pinnacle for each adult" (p. 26). "The fully developed adult is, of necessity, a generative, integrated, and ethical adult, the endpoint to which we all 'ought to' aim" (p. 36).

It is our existential identity that presides over and moves us toward wholeness in our adulthood. Our existential identity refers to our sense of who we are individually and as contributors to the work of our society. A mature, inclusive identity is, in part, a byproduct of understanding (acutely perceiving with one's entire awareness) of unconsciously accumulated prejudicial biases, accompanied by compassion and empathy for others. Mature adults minimize projecting the negative elements of their identity onto others. They are able to remain open to differences and to integrate their affect with their reason so that "it can reside within the social perspective and view of another" (p. 63). The "movement to a more mature identity requires adults to transcend egocentric, individualistic identities that are construed as self in autonomy and work alone" (p. 49). Sometimes, in order to gain insight into their egocentric prejudice, adults need to be "jolted out" of their unconscious habitual behaviors and biases. The identity of the mature adult does not depend on the loss of the identity of the other.

For Erikson, mature adults are ethical, principled adults. "They build on their own strengths, give of themselves without expecting a return of favors in kind, and avoid judging and controlling others" (p....

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!