Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Erikson: Post−Freudian
Theory
(^260) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
important basic strength. Inadequate will is expressed as compulsion, the core
pathology of early childhood. Too little will and too much compulsivity carry for-
ward into the play age as lack of purpose and into the school age as lack of confi-
dence.
Play Age
Erikson’s third stage of development is the play age,a period covering the same time
as Freud’s phallic phase—roughly ages 3 to 5 years. Again, differences emerge be-
tween the views of Freud and Erikson. Whereas Freud placed the Oedipus complex
at the core of the phallic stage, Erikson believed that the Oedipus complex is but one
of several important developments during the play age. Erikson (1968) contended
that, in addition to identifying with their parents, preschool-age children are devel-
oping locomotion, language skills, curiosity, imagination, and the ability to set goals.
Genital-Locomotor Mode
The primary psychosexual mode during the play age is genital-locomotor.Erikson
(1982) saw the Oedipal situation as a prototype “of the lifelong power of human
playfulness” (p. 77). In other words, the Oedipus complex is a drama played out in
the child’s imagination and includes the budding understanding of such basic con-
cepts as reproduction, growth, future, and death. The Oedipus and castration com-
plexes, therefore, are not always to be taken literally. A child may play at being a
mother, a father, a wife, or a husband; but such play is an expression not only of the
genital mode but also of the child’s rapidly developing locomotor abilities. A little
girl may envy boys, not because boys possess a penis, but rather because society
grants more prerogatives to children with a penis. A little boy may have anxiety
about losing something, but this anxiety refers not only to the penis but also to other
body parts. The Oedipus complex, then, is both more than and less than what Freud
believed, and infantile sexuality is “a mere promise of things to come” (Erikson,
1963, p. 86). Unless sexual interest is provoked by cultural sex play or by adult sex-
ual abuse, the Oedipus complex produces no harmful effects on later personality de-
velopment.
The interest that play-age children have in genital activity is accompanied by
their increasing facility at locomotion. They can now move with ease, running, jump-
ing, and climbing with no conscious effort; and their play shows both initiative and
imagination. Their rudimentary will, developed during the preceding stage, is now
evolving into activity with a purpose.Children’s cognitive abilities enable them to
manufacture elaborate fantasies that include Oedipal fantasies but also include imag-
ining what it is like to be grown up, to be omnipotent, or to be a ferocious animal.
These fantasies, however, also produce guilt and thus contribute to the psychosocial
crisis of the play age, namely, initiative versus guilt.
Initiative Versus Guilt
As children begin to move around more easily and vigorously and as their genital in-
terest awakens, they adopt an intrusive head-on mode of approaching the world. Al-
though they begin to adopt initiativein their selection and pursuit of goals, many
254 Part II Psychodynamic Theories