Maybe some of you have heard of Erik Erikson. He was a developmental psychologist who developed a way to explain human development across the lifespan. I am not an expert on human development or Erikson, but to my understanding, his idea goes something like this.
Each person must pass through a series of stages as they develop into an adult and beyond. Failure to resolve a stage impairs a person’s ability to move on to the next stage. The stages are focused on the concepts of trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity.
According to Erikson, if a person never develops trust in infancy, they may never reach full adulthood. They may always be held back by that lack of trust and never become a person of autonomy and initiative. If a teenager/young adult doesn’t develop a sense of identity, they are forever hindered by it and struggle to move on and form intimate relationships as an adult. If a person never learns to work for the greater good (generativity), they might not develop the integrity needed to accept old age and death.
I have no clue if Erikson was right, but some of what he says makes sense. When we encounter an adult who lacks trust, initiative, or autonomy, we tend to accuse that person of being “childish.” When we interact with children who have well-formed identities and well-established relationships with others, we call them “mature.”
We all see examples of older adults who face their own mortality with integrity and acceptance, and those who rebel like unruly teenagers at the harshness of aging. And some of us have had the unfortunate experience of meeting individuals so crippled by a lack of trust in others that they never form any authentically intimate connections, whether in friendships or in romantic relationships.
I think Erikson may have been onto something. But what if he didn’t take it far enough? What if the path our human selves must take, with its required stopping points and tasks along the way, unfolds on a much higher level?
What if our souls are continually reborn, with the goal of moving through these stages? Maybe those individuals who behave in seemingly childish ways (being selfish, being emotionally immature, being unable to form intimate relationships) are simply young souls. Perhaps their souls have not gone through this bizarre experience called existence enough times to have reached “adulthood.” Perhaps they need more opportunities to complete their tasks so they can advance to a higher stage of development.
Maybe those we encounter who seem to be “old souls,” even as children, have gone through this crazy thing we call life countless times and completed their required tasks along the way. They exist in their serene state of integrity because they have already ridden the roller coaster so many times that the thrills, the ascents, the plummets, and the surprises around every turn no longer frighten them. They can genuinely just be along for the ride.
Source: Palm, M. (n.d.). 19.1 Erikson’s theory of Psychosocial Development. Lifespan Human Development: A Topical Approach.
