- Trust vs. Mistrust = hope or withdrawal
- Autonomy vs. Shame, Doubt = will or compulsion
- Initiative vs. Guilt = purpose or inhibition
- Industry vs. Inferiority = competence or inertia
- Identity vs. Identity Confusion = fidelity or repudiation
- Intimacy vs. Isolation = love or exclusivity
- Generativity vs. Stagnation = care or rejectivity
- Integrity vs. Despair = wisdom or disdain
With all the power that the world has over us as we proceed
through the early years of our lives, it is a wonder that any of us
manages to resolve any of these crises in a positive way. Or as a
woman once said to me, the phrase “dysfunctional family” is
redundant: “If there’s a functional family anywhere, I certainly
haven’t seen it.” What she meant by that is that the Cleavers,
Waltons, Huxtables, and other fictional happy families are far
from the reality most of us experience. TV sitcom children are
a good deal more likely to enjoy wise, nurturing parents and
happy childhoods than the population at large.
Analyst Gould told me he wanted to write a book on recov-
ering from childhood that would focus on “overcoming the
adaptational warp that takes place early in life. If you let it
happen, you undergo an automatic recovery process in the
course of facing and dealing with new realities. In order to
respond to the challenges of each cycle of your life appropri-
ately, you have to continually re-examine your defenses and
assumptions, and in the course of that re-examination, you
iron out the way.... Feelings are memories of past behavior.
When you sort them out and see what’s current and what’s left
over, you can literally begin to use your thinking process to
change your behavior.”
On Becoming a Leader