Erikson’s Stages of Life

Erik Erikson’s timeline is used to address the different stages of a person’s life and what kind of questions they usually ask themselves. The point of the timeline is used to see what point the person is at within their life, they can be pinpointed based on their current needs.

I think that I fit into the Erikson’s timeline in the “young adulthood” stage. In this stage the psychosocial issue is intimacy vs. isolation. The central question resolves around “How can I love?”. I believe that I am in this stage because this is actually where I am at in my life. I fit the young adulthood stage. I am at that age where I spend time trying to find a person that I can love for the rest of my life and I am learning how to open up to other people so that I can achieve this.

This is the stage in which young adults seek out relationships of intimacy with others or suffer though feelings of isolation. I am at that point of my life that I want to find someone that I can spend the rest of my life with. I am past the point where I want to be alone and have come to the part of my life that I want to find a person to settle down with and have kids with. I have sought to answer this question by dating people that I think have the kind of traits that would be most beneficial to meet my needs and help for me to pass along my genes with. I have almost been a serial dater just to answer this question and to finally find out what love really is.

My boyfriend took a look at the timeline and chose the Generativity vs. Stagnation, though he did not see what the stage and age group was. He has already done so much revolving around the other parts of the stages, but has not had children. The central question around this is “How can I fashion a “gift”?. He has spent a lot of time thinking about himself that I think that now if the time for him to pass this selfishness off and learn to really care for others. He has sought to answer this question by having conversations about us having a child, luckily we have agreed not to pursue this for some time, but he has expressed concern with passing his name and genes along.