Freud's psychosexual and Erikson's psychosocial stages
Last reviewed September 2026 by Dr. Andrew Wichterman · Aligned to the current NCE blueprint. Valid for exams through June 30, 2027.
AI-narrated overview made with Google NotebookLM. The written lesson below is by Dr. Andrew Wichterman.
Two stage theories anchor the lifespan items in Areas of Clinical Focus. Freud's five psychosexual stages are tested lightly; Erikson's eight psychosocial stages are tested heavily, usually as an age or a scenario that you must match to a crisis and its virtue.
Try to answer each from memory first, even if you have to guess. Guessing before reading makes the answer stick; reveal only after you have tried.
Freud: five psychosexual stages
Oral, birth to about 18 months: the mouth is the source of gratification; fixation is linked to dependency, smoking, overeating. Anal, 18 months to 3 years: toilet training; fixation to orderliness or messiness. Phallic, 3 to 6: the Oedipus and Electra conflicts and identification with the same-sex parent; the superego forms. Latency, 6 to puberty: sexual energy is dormant and channeled into school and friendships. Genital, puberty on: mature sexuality. The exam usually asks what happens at a stage or what a fixation produces.
Erikson: eight crises
Erik Erikson extended development across the whole life and replaced Freud's drives with social tasks. Each stage is a crisis between two poles, resolved toward a virtue. Trust versus mistrust, birth to 1, hope. Autonomy versus shame and doubt, 1 to 3, will. Initiative versus guilt, 3 to 6, purpose. Industry versus inferiority, 6 to 12, competence. Identity versus role confusion, adolescence, fidelity. Intimacy versus isolation, young adulthood, love. Generativity versus stagnation, middle adulthood, care. Integrity versus despair, late adulthood, wisdom.
Learn them as a chant. The exam gives an age, a behavior, or a virtue and asks for the stage, and it goes both directions.
Matching scenarios to stages
A toddler insisting on doing it herself is autonomy versus shame and doubt. A fourth grader who gives up on schoolwork after comparing himself to classmates is industry versus inferiority. A 17-year-old trying on different friend groups and beliefs is identity versus role confusion. A 45-year-old who feels his work contributes nothing to the next generation is generativity versus stagnation. A 78-year-old reviewing her life with regret is integrity versus despair. Marcia extended the identity stage into four statuses, covered in Lesson 5.
Joan Erikson's ninth stage
Late in life Joan Erikson added a ninth stage for very old age, in which physical decline forces the earlier crises to be revisited and the negative pole often dominates. Successful resolution she called gerotranscendence: a shift from the material and rational toward a cosmic, less self-centered perspective. It appears as an occasional item.
Freud and Erikson side by side
Freud: five stages, ending at puberty in effect, driven by libido, with fixation as the failure mode. Erikson: eight stages across the life span, driven by social relationships, with each crisis partly resolved and revisited later. When an item asks which theorist saw development as lifelong, the answer is Erikson. When it asks about fixation, the answer is Freud.
Without scrolling up, write everything you remember from this lesson. Then check yourself against the key terms. Recalling the whole lesson once, right after reading it, does more than reading it twice.
Ten questions from this domain, with an explanation after each answer.
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