- Young adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation
- Adulthood: Generativity vs. Stagnation
- Old age: Integrity vs. Despair
Erikson believes that we do not proceed to the next stage
until each stage’s crisis has been satisfactorily resolved. Too
many of us, for example, never overcome the inner struggle
between initiative and guilt, and so we lack real purpose. A
woman caught between motherhood and an urge for a career
was thought only a generation ago to be at best selfish, at
worst unnatural. Giving up motherhood was deemed unthink-
able; trying to juggle her children and her career was a frus-
trating and usually unsupported choice. Whichever course she
took, initiative and guilt struggled, unresolved. And, of course,
these inner conflicts were made outwardly manifest, inflicted
on the people in her life, as well as on herself. No one, includ-
ing the hermit, suffers alone.
Traditionally, it has been easier for men to make their way
through these stages and their attendant crises, but all too of-
ten, prodded by well-meaning parents and teachers, men, too,
do what they’re supposed to do in life, not what they want to
do. In this way, the man who dreams of being a poet becomes
an accountant and the would-be cowboy becomes an executive,
and both suffer the torments of the unfulfilled. And who knows
what they might have done if they had chosen to follow their
dreams? Former Beatle John Lennon, possibly the most influ-
ential songwriter of his generation, gave the aunt who raised
him a gold plaque engraved with her oft-repeated dictum,
“You’ll never make a living playing that guitar.”
In the world according to Erikson, how we resolve the eight
crises determines who we will be:
Knowing Yourself