According to Sigmund Freud, development was confined to the first 14 years of life progressing through the psycho sexual stages of personality transformation. The child was father to the man. Whatever happened during the five stages of psycho sexual development set the stages for later development. Erickson, a psycho analyst, saw development having its own special challenges beyond the adolescent years. He postulated a total of eight stages. Freud's theory emphasised the biological drives of libido and aggression as forces driving development. Erickson shifted attention from biology to the role of early caretakers. He called his theory a psychosocial theory. Freud did not discover the unconscious, philosophers did that. He tried to make psychoanalysis a science but it is also an art. There are subjective components. Freud was a neurologist.
C.G.S Hall in the 19th and early 20th centuries although mainly interested in child and adolescent psychology did devote his remaining years to the study of adulthood. Like Freud, he believed that biology was the determining force in development. He conceptualised development as proceeding through stages that represented condensed phases of humankind's overall evolutionary descent. At each stage there were qualities remnant of our ancestrial past and each individual recapitulated in his own development. These earlier specie qualities became known as the Principal of Recapitulation. As one goes through the stages, we move from selfishness to co-operative. Each individual has a blue print that exhibits characteristics that demonstrates our ancestorial traits.
To be continued:
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