Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Freud-Erikson

Erikson's theory was more comfortable and reasonable for me than Freud's one. Freud's theory was surprisingly applied for most situations and human's characteristics, however, it was really hard to accept for me because of it's determinants (maybe it is from cultural background). I liked Erikson's arguments because he considered the future and adulthood too while Freud has concentrated on the previous experiences in childhood.
Also, I liked the concept of "identity crisis" even though this concept is still abstract. I had a conversation with my friend several days ago and we talked about continuous stressful events and anxiety in the whole life. We both agreed with the advantages of stress because we thought that human can be continuously developed by overcoming the stress until the death. When I read Erikson's identity crisis, I felt the similar thing (human is developed via each crisis stage). I focused on understanding the process during the crisis and I was curious about the difference between Freud's concept of anxiety and guilty and Erikson's anxiety and guilty during the formation of identity.

In the last week, I imagined the argument between Freud and Skinner (maybe never compromised discussion?). However, I realized that the discussion between Freud and Erikson would be more interesting! It is still hard to catch subtle distinctions between them because there is definitely Freud's basic assumptions in Erikson's theory but I felt that Erikson developed Freud's theory to adapt it for broader and normal people with new concepts. I'm wondering how Freud would argue about it.

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