Question

• Briefly define the Erikson, Peck and Levinson theory as related to young adulthood and middle adulthood.
• Discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages that may occur when applying these theories to human behavior.

Answer 1

The word intimacy will evoke thoughts of a sexual relationship in young adulthood. During the period of young adulthood, the major conflict in this stage is on forming intimate and loving relationships with other people. Success at this stage will leads to fulfilling relationships. While, failure in fulfilling this may result in feelings of loneliness and isolation. While in the middle adulthood, is the stage where adults strive to create or nurture things that will outlast them; often by parenting children or contributing to positive changes that benefit other people. Contributing to society and doing things that benefit future generations, etc are important needs at the generativity versus stagnation. While Peck’s theory is quite similar to Erikson’s theory on young and middle adulthood, Peck also noted that during middle adulthood, a person wish to live a self-centered life and he focuses mainly on his personal pleasures even when it is at the expense of other people. However, also people exhibit emotional and social intelligence at their middle age stage. According to Levinson’s theory, early adulthood begins at around 22 years where the person learns to be independent financially and emotionally. Levinson theorized that there are “Seasons of Life” through which each person travels in his life, and he resolves specific crisis within all these stages. And during these early adulthood, in which one learns to take on an adult role within society, which includes starting a family and a relationship. While the middle adulthood begins at 30 years when a person realizes that there is no further turning back. And they learns to accept their aging and resolve and they rebalance issues in their life which stems from mismatched priorities and in the sense identity, such as being young or old.

Erikson & Levinson also to have similar ideas when it comes to social personal development. Erikson's theory emphasizes on the importance of child-adolescent development and he proposes that it is early development that defines and impacts the personality and identity of an individual later on in life. It cover adult development as well but the issue for Erikson is the personality is shaped by early development and the rigid structure to Erikson's theory didn't take into consideration how cultural differences have affected the time during which an individual was in one particular stage. The opposite of this is true for Levinson. For him personality evolves all throughout life because we have different experiences and also experience changes countinuously and stimulants may causes change, to evolve and to adopt new elements while also permit to go of certain elements of identity and personality that do not fit into the newly established self. While peck described the main issues in early adulthood such as, the retirement and work role, body and aging,and ego and death.