Organismic Theory cont......(human development)

Growing, maturing and adaptive development is part of this theory's perspective.  Development is seen as orderly, following a sequence or stage.  A stage is a pattern of behaviour that is qualitatively different from previous subsequent stages development.  Although there is continuity from one stage to the next, development is also discontinuous with new patterns emerging.  This unfolding of development from one stage to the next is universal.  Guided by intrinsic growth processes known as maturation.  Everyone goes through the same stages in the same sequence.  What varies is not the order of progression but the rate of progression.  For Erickson, development is an integrative process driven by conflict.  At each stage, resolution of a crises depends on achieving a balance between opposing traits such as intimacy versus isolation.  Crises resolved may repair, be solved in alternate fashion.  Healthy development does depend on adaptive resolution.