FREE ESSAY ON PIAGET V ERIKSON

PIAGET V ERIKSON

dolescence is considered a difficult time of life and one in which a number of changes
occur as the individual achieves a certain integration of different aspects of
personality. One approach to the cognitive and emotional transitions made at different
times of life is to consider how the changes in, say, adolescence are linked to a
continuum of change beginning in childhood and continuing throughout life. Some
theorists, such as Piaget, were interested primarily in the transitions of childhood and
youth, while others, such as Erikson, saw all of life as a series of transitions and
offered a continuum of stages covering all of life.
Piaget became fascinated in his early studies with his discovery that children of the
same age often gave the same incorrect answers to questions, suggesting that there were
consistent, qualitative differences in the nature of reasoning at different ages, not
simply a quantitative increase in the amount of intelligence or knowledge. This discovery
marked the beginning of Piaget's continuing effort to identify changes in the way
children think﷓﷓how they perceive their world in different ways at
different points in development. Piaget's contributions can be summarized by grouping
them into four main areas. First, he produced literature on the general stages of
intellectual development from infancy through adulthood. This concern occupied him from
1925 to 1940, and after 1940 he began to describe some of the developmental stages in
formal, structural terms using models from symbolic logic (Flavell, 1963, 1-9).
The different stages postulated by Piaget help to explain different rats of learning at
different ages as well as the types of learning possible at different ages for the
majority of the population. Learning itself is seen by Piaget as a process of discovery
on the part of the individual, and learning as a formal activity becomes a system of
organization by which instruction is enhanced by the way the teacher arranges experience.
Learning is thus experiential, and Piaget suggests that experiences have meaning to the
extent that they can be assimilated. Such assimilation does not take place without
accommodation, an aspect of considerable importance from the point of view of adaptation
and possible development:
One of the principal aims of the teacher will be to present situations to the child which
require him to adapt his past experience. The teacher is concerned with facilitating
adaptation and assisting the child along the developmental path (Flavell, 1963, 91).
The learning situation thus becomes a means of discovery as the child encounters
something that is unknown, new, or problematical for the child. The achievement of
understanding of this experiences produces an adaptation, and each adaptation made by the
child is a discovery for him or her, an insight made through experience. Such a discovery
process is ongoing and is not to be seen as a series of leaps from one insight to
another. The process of discovery continues and builds on experiences already assimilated
and adapted. The process is marked out by minute consolidations and extensions of past
experience, with perhaps an occasional flash of insight (Flavell, 1963, 91-92).
There are two principal learning theories in psychology, one of which focuses on the
learning process while the other focuses on the capacity to learn. Piaget offered a
biological theory of intelligence that was quite different and that he presented as a
unified approach to intelligence and learning. Piaget restricted the ideal of learning to
an acquisition of new knowledge that derives primarily from contact with the physical or
social environment:
He opposes it on the one hand to maturation which is based on physiological processes; on
the other hand and most importantly he differentiates it from the acquisition of general
knowledge or intelligence which he defines as the slowly developing sum total of action
coordinations available to an organism at a given stage (Furth, 1969, 221).
Piaget contends that this general knowledge is actively constructed by the individual
who, in constructing this knowledge, lives the process of his or her development.
Piaget had actually started out to analyze the meaning and origin of intelligence, and he
defined intelligence as the totality of behavioral coordinations that characterize
behavior at a certain stage of development. For Piaget, intelligence was the behavioral
analogue of a biological organ which regulates the organism's behavioral exchange with
the environment, an interaction that constitutes behavior and that involves the process
of discovery discussed previously. All adaptive behavior in this conception implies some
knowing in the form of at least minimal knowledge of the environment. Another way of
phrasing this is offered by Furth:
Evolutionary development proceeds in a manner of an organizing totality, not in the sense
of an outside influence or purpose that pulls from ahead, or a drive that pushes from
behind, but as a regulating factor that is intrinsic to the unfolding of evolutionary
organizations (Furth, 1969, 246).
Erikson's approach is a pscyhosocial theory of development which describes a series of
eight stages in the development of the individual throughout life. This is based on the
interaction of biological, psychological, and social processes, and it is the interaction
of these processes that accounts for the psycho (inner) social (external) character of
development. The stages are described by Erikson as psychosocial crises, and the reason
for this is that they are intended to represent periods when the individual is
particularly sensitive or vulnerable to certain developmental issues. Each of the crisis
stages is described by Erikson in terms of its positive outcome or strength versus its
negative outcome or weakness, and the relative degree to which the resolution of each
crisis can be considered favorable or unfavorable serves as one factor determining the
outcome of later stages. Each stage thus relates to every other stage (Whitbourne &
Weinstock, 1986, 13).
Erikson's formulation of the eight stages has roots in Freud, but Erikson has added
various innovative dimensions. Freud presented an important model of psychosexual
development, and he felt that during the first five years of life, the individual was
confronted with a series of conflicts which he or she would resolve with varying degrees
of success. Freud did not emphasize development to the same extent after this first
five-year period, and Erikson has tried to conceptualize these later periods in greater
detail and has also developed an analysis of man's over-all development in these eight
stages (Whitbourne & Weinstock, 1986, 13-15).
In these eight stages, each critical encounter with the environment will dominate at a
particular period in the life cycle. The conflicts are not completely separated--all
eight conflicts are present in the individual at birth, and each of the conflicts
continues to play a role, if a minor one, throughout life. The first stage is basic trust
versus mistrust as the infant must develop sufficient trust to let its mother out of
sight without anxiety. The second stage is that of autonomy versus shame and doubt, and
this sense is usually developed through bladder and bowel control and parallels the anal
stage of traditional psychoanalytic theory. The third stage is that of initiative versus
guilt, the last conflict experienced by the preschool child and occurring during what
Freud called the phallic stage. The child now must learn to appropriately control
feelings of rivalry for the mother's attention and develop a sense of moral
responsibility. The fourth stage is industry versus inferiority, the conflict beginning
with school life or the onset of formal socialization. The child must apply himself to
his lesson, begin to feel some sense of competence relative to peers, and face his own
limitations if he is to emerge as a healthy individual. The fifth stage is identity
versus role confusion, and this is the first stage of what we call adolescence. Identity
here refers to the confidence that others see us as we see ourselves, and if an identity
is not formed, role confusion may occur, often characterized by an inability to select a
career or to further educational goals. The sixth stage is that of intimacy versus
isolation. It occurs in young adulthood when people are expected to be ready for true
intimacy and when they must develop cooperative social and occupational relationships
with others and select a mate. The seventh stage is that of generativity versus
stagnation--the individual needs to be needed and to assist the younger members of
society, and generativity is concerned with guiding the next generation. The last stage
is that of ego integrity versus despair, and this is the time when the way the other
conflicts were decided has an influence. If the preceding conflicts were not suitably
handled, despair may result in later life (Liebert & Spiegler, 1982, 88-92).
Piaget was most interested in the learning stages for the child, while Erikson carried
his stages through the life cycle. Both indicate how the stage of adolescence is part of
a continuum, however, prepared for by childhood and leading to adulthood. Further
research may differentiate even more divisions over the adolescent years.
References
Flavell, J.H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: D. Van
Nostrand.
Furth, H.G. (1969). Piaget and Knowledge. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Liebert, R. M. & M. D. Spiegler (1982). Personality: Strategies and issues. Homewood,
Illinois: The Dorsey Press.
Whitbourne, S.K. & C.S. Weinstock (1986). Adult development. New York: Praeger.