Chapter 7 Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory 201roles we play. Although adolescence is ordinarily the time when these three com-
ponents are changing most rapidly, alterations in body ego, ego ideal, and ego
identity can and do take place at any stage of life.
Society’s Influence
Although inborn capacities are important in personality development, the ego
emerges from and is largely shaped by society. Erikson’s emphasis on social and
historical factors was in contrast with Freud’s mostly biological viewpoint. To
Erikson, the ego exists as potential at birth, but it must emerge from within a
cultural environment. Different societies, with their variations in child-rearing prac-
tices, tend to shape personalities that fit the needs and values of their culture. For
example, Erikson (1963) found that prolonged and permissive nursing of infants
of the Sioux nation (sometimes for as long as 4 or 5 years) resulted in what Freud
would call “oral” personalities: that is, people who gain great pleasure through
functions of the mouth. The Sioux place great value on generosity, and Erikson
believed that the reassurance resulting from unlimited breast-feeding lays the foun-
dation for the virtue of generosity. However, Sioux parents quickly suppress biting,
a practice that may contribute to the child’s fortitude and ferocity. On the other
hand, people of the Yurok nation set strict regulations concerning elimination of
urine and feces, practices that tend to develop “anality,” or compulsive neatness,
stubbornness, and miserliness. In European American societies, orality and anality
are often considered undesirable traits or neurotic symptoms. Erikson (1963), how-
ever, argued that orality among the Sioux hunters and anality among the Yurok
fishermen are adaptive characteristics that help both the individual and the culture.
The fact that European American culture views orality and anality as deviant traits
merely displays its own ethnocentric view of other societies. Erikson (1968, 1974)
argued that historically all tribes or nations, including the United States, have devel-
oped what he called a pseudospecies: that is, an illusion perpetrated and perpetu-
ated by a particular society that it is somehow chosen to be the human species. In
past centuries, this belief has aided the survival of the tribe, but with modern means
of world annihilation, such a prejudiced perception (as demonstrated by Nazi
Gemany) threatens the survival of every nation.
One of Erikson’s principal contributions to personality theory was his extension
of the Freudian early stages of development to include school age, youth, adulthood,
and old age. Before looking more closely at Erikson’s theory of ego development, we
discuss his view of how personality develops from one stage to the next.
Epigenetic Principle
Erikson believed that the ego develops throughout the various stages of life accord-
ing to an epigenetic principle, a term borrowed from embryology. Epigenetic
development implies a step-by-step growth of fetal organs. The embryo does not
begin as a completely formed little person, waiting to merely expand its structure
and form. Rather, it develops, or should develop, according to a predetermined rate
and in a fixed sequence. If the eyes, liver, or other organs do not develop during
that critical period for their development, then they will never attain proper maturity.