1. NCFE Level 3 Diploma in Counselling Skills
Lesson 21 Erik Erikson
NCFE Level 3 Diploma in Counselling Skills

2. Learning Objectives Case-study group
Psychodynamic therapy by Erik Erikson
Basic background about Erikson
Psychosocial stages
Free Association
Free Dream Work

3. Case-Study

4. Erik Erikson Lived from 1902 – 1994.
Started as a teacher of art and other
subjects.
Developed the 8 psychosocial develop-
mental stages. This was considered a big
step away from Freud, as Freud’s focus was on the psychosexual stages of development.
He coined the phrase Identity Crisis

5. Psychosocial stages
1. Infancy: Birth – 18 months old: Trust vs. mistrust
2. Toddler / Early childhood years: 18 months – 3 years old
Autonomy vs shame and doubt
3. Pre-schooler: 3 – 5 years old: Initiative vs. guilt
4. School age child: 6 – 12 years old: Industry vs. inferiority
5. Adolescent: 12 – 18 years old: Identity vs. role confusion
6. Young adult: 18 – 35 years old: Intimacy vs. isolation
7. Middle-aged adult: 35 to 55 / 65 years old: Generativity vs. Stagnation
8. Late adult: 55/ 65 to death: Ego integrity vs. despair

6. How do you recognize these stages within yourself
How do you recognize these stages within yourself? How do they feel in comparison to Freud’s stages?

7. Suggested further reading
Erikson, E (1997), The Life Cycle Completed,
First Edition, W.W. Norton New York

8. Free Association Patient: Putting into words without
censorship whatever thoughts or
fantasies come to mind. He takes
the initiative.
Therapist: Sits out of sight, at their head. Assumes a passive attitude.
It is a technique where the patient learns to help himself, learning to use psychoanalysis as a means of understanding themselves better. It was hoped that, armed with new insight, they would then be able to solve their own problems.
Storr, A (2001) Freud, A Very Short Introduction, First Edition, University Oxford Press

9. Dreams Freud said: “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious”
Kahn, M. (2002) Basic Freud (First Edition), Basic Books
“Freud considered that the majority of dreams had as their core an unacceptable wish which was striving, in the dream, to find indirect expression. He believed that the “manifest content” of a dream was merely a cloak concealing the “latent content”, which was generally some repressed sexual desire of an infantile kind. Jung, on the other hand, regarded dreams as communications from the unconscious. Dreams might be couched in symbolic language which was hard to understand; but they were not necessarily concerned with wishes, nor ways of concealing the unacceptable.”
Storr, 1983, p.17-18). Storr, A. (1983) The essential Jung (First Edition?)

10. Free Dream-Work Freud: with very few exceptions, dreams
were disguised, hallucinatory fulfilments of repressed current wishes, but were also invariable expressions of wish fulfilments dating from early childhood, coming from infantile sexual wishes which had been repressed.
Jung: Dreams are communications from the unconscious. Dreams might be couched in symbolic language which was hard to understand; but they were not necessarily concerned with wishes (of the infantile child or otherwise), nor ways of concealing the unacceptable. Through joint reflection of the dream, understanding can be found.

11. Did we cover this? Case-study group
Psychodynamic therapy by Erik Erikson
Basic background about Erikson
Psychosocial stages
Free Association
Free Dream Work

12. Closing