Chapter 2 Post #1

Something that I found interesting in Chapter 2 was the information on Erik Erikson and his theories. I was surprised to read that he changed his last name himself in order to reflect the importance of the identity crisis that asks the question “Who am I?” during adolescence. I had never known that his last name was changed, nor that he changed it himself. Erikson’s ideas are different from the other theories in this chapter because they deal with different types of crisis as a developmental stage rather than stages of learning. In Piaget’s theory, each of the periods are based off of different things that are learned. With Erikson, he believes that stages of development are psychosocial and are based on crisis rather than learning. All of his eight developmental stages are ones that we all go through while growing up. I believe that these are things that we face not only just in childhood and adolescence, but also as adults in everyday life. For example, we face issues dealing with Intimacy vs. Isolation, as well as Trust vs. Mistrust. Most of his developmental stages are ones that we still face everyday today. They shape the way that we develop as humans in our adolescence and continue to shape us as we become adults.