Gender Issues Essay

According to Elisabeth Horst, Erik Eriksons theories pertaining to individuality and intimacy disconcerns sexual differences. The primary consensus of several writers concludes that Erikson believes that women rely on marriage to develop their personal identity. This was written at a time when differences in sexes were treated as afterthoughts. He based his theories on the manly translation of experience. Yet Erikson did not portray women as inferior. There seems to be a conflict in underemphasizing womens roles and overemphasizing womens roles and overemphasizing their role in the social system.Very little was written about women in this time. champion author (Marcia, 1980) implicated that intimacy becomes more of a female task and identity demonstrates a masculine task. Orlosfsky (1977) defines the masculine traits such as independence, autonomy, and assertiveness even more important to forming identity than the more feminine characteristics of warmth, tenderness, and underst anding. Some writers disagree with Eriksons theory of human development because they considered him to be a sexist.His writings involve the masculine aspect more than the feminine side in his studies. Horst, E. A. (1995). Reexamining Gender Issues in Eriksons Stages of identity element and Intimacy. Journal of Counseling & Development, 73 (3), 271-278. Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in Adolescence. In J. Adelson (Ed. ), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. New York. Wiley. individuation and Attachments Many feminist critize Erik Eriksons theory because of neglect or misprotrayal of female experience. He seems to presume that identity precedes intimacy.This seems to add limitations to his universal theory of human development. Even though he includes trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity into his theories. Erikson demonstrates the stages of life as (I) Infancy showing trust vs mistrust ages 0-16 months (II)Early Childhood 17-36 months (I II) Play Age (IV)School Age 6-12 (V) Adolescent (VI) childlike Adult (VII) Adulthood (VIII) Mature Age It appears as if Erikson did not elaborate on attachment during early childhood and childhood, thus the need to apply the notions of Jean Piaget.