Developmental stage theories

Portfolio activity - Unit 1

University of the People

EDUC 5420-AY2022-T4

Vadim Vlasov

April 12, 2022

Developmental stage theories are theories that divide a child's development into separate stages characterized by qualitative differences in behavior. Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why people change throughout their lives. Initially, the field of activity was related to infants and children, and now it includes adolescence, adult development, aging and the entire life span. Developmental psychology seeks to explain how thinking, feelings, and behavior change throughout life. This field examines changes in three main dimensions: physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. These three dimensions include a wide range of topics, including motor skills, executive functions, comprehension, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-esteem, and personality formation.

Developmental psychology includes a number of fields such as educational psychology, child psychopathology, forensic psychology, child development, cognitive psychology, environmental psychology and cultural psychology. Influential developmental psychologists of the 20th century include Uri Bronfenbrenner, Eric Erickson, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Barbara Rogoff, Esther Thelen and Lev Vygotsky.

Psychoanalysis initially emerged as a method of treatment, but was soon perceived as a means of obtaining psychological facts that formed the basis of a new psychological system.

Freud, analyzing the free associations of patients, came to the conclusion that the diseases of an adult are reduced to childhood experiences. The basis of the theoretical concept of psychoanalysis is the discovery of the unconscious and sexual origin. The scientist attributed to the unconscious the inability of patients to understand the true meaning of what they say and what they do. Childhood experiences, according to Freud, have a sexual nature. This is a feeling of love and hatred for a father or mother, jealousy of a brother or sister, etc.

In Freud's understanding, personality is the interaction of motivating and restraining forces. All stages of a person's mental development, in his opinion, are associated with sexual development. These stages are: oral stage (from birth to 1 year); Anal stage (1-3 years); Phallic stage (3-5 years); Latent stage (5-12 years); Genital stage (12-18 years old). Four of these stages extend from birth to puberty, and the last stage continues for the rest of life.

Genital stage - Freud believed that a teenager aspires to one goal – normal sexual communication; during this period, all erogenous zones unite. If the implementation of normal sexual communication is difficult, then you can observe the phenomena of fixation or regression to one of the previous stages. At this stage, the instance of the "I" must fight against the aggressive impulses of the "It", which again makes itself felt. The goal is to maintain a sense of balance in all aspects of one's life. (McLeod, 2008).

Freud's concept of development is a dynamic concept in which it is shown that another person plays the main role in human development, and not the objects that surround him. This is one of its main advantages.

The outstanding Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) in this concept considered it valuable to establish the fact of the subconscious determinability of a number of mental phenomena (for example, neuroses) and the fact of latent sexuality, but criticized the transformation of sexuality into a metaphysical principle that penetrated into different branches of psychology. Vygotsky believed that there are two types of mental development: biological and historical (cultural). He believed that these types actually exist in a merged form and form a single process in ontogenesis. In this the scientist saw the greatest and main peculiarity of the child's mental development. He wrote: "The growth of a normal child into civilization is usually a single fusion with the processes of its organic maturation."

The emergence of the theory of personality of the American psychoanalyst E. Erickson (1904-1994) was promoted by works on psychoanalysis. Erickson adopted the personality structure of Freud and created a psychoanalytic concept about the relationship of the "I" and society. He paid special attention to the role of the "I" in the development of personality, believing that the foundations of the human "I" lie in the social organization of society. He came to this conclusion by observing the personal changes that occurred with people in post-war America. People have become more anxious, rigid, prone to apathy, confusion. Having accepted the idea of unconscious motivation, Erickson paid special attention to the processes of socialization in his research. According to E. Erickson, the main identity crisis occurs in adolescence. If the development processes go well, then the acquisition of an "adult identity" occurs, and if there are difficulties in development, there is a delay in identity. Erickson called the interval between adolescence and adulthood a "psychosocial moratorium." This is the time when a young man tries to find his place in life by trial and error. The turbulence of this crisis depends on how successfully the previous crises (trust, independence, activity, etc.) were resolved and on the spiritual atmosphere in society. If the crisis has not been successfully overcome in the early stages, there may be a delay in identity (Erickson, 1996).

Piaget believed that intellectual development occurs through a series of stages, which he described in his theory of cognitive development. Each stage consists of steps that the child must master before moving on to the next step. He believed that these stages are not separate from each other, but rather that each stage builds on the previous one in a continuous learning process. He proposed four stages: sensorimotor, preoperative, specific operational and formal operational.

The stage of formal operations begins after the age of 12 and continues throughout a person's life. At this stage, thinking becomes more flexible, the reversibility of mental operations and reasoning is realized, the ability to reason using abstract concepts appears; the ability to systematically search for ways to solve problems with viewing many solutions and evaluating the effectiveness of each of them develops.