All right, we are finally to the last stage of Eric Erickson's Psychosocial Development. And you've seen how each stage kind of builds on this previous stage, right? So we're finally to that last stage of development, 65 or 70 and over. Now, for this stage, we have a little different type of review.
Remember, in the previous stage, we had a midlife reflection, where we went back and we kind of took stock and made some changes. This stage is called the end-of-life review, or it's actually called integrity versus despair, according to Erickson, and it's marked by an end-of-life review. So one of the things this person does is they kind of ask themselves a basic question, did I live a good life? And if their answer is yes, I mean, sure, I made some mistakes here and there, but for the most part, I can accept what I've done. I can move forward with it.
I feel like I played my cards, at least. I mean, the idea that if life is kind of like a card game. You were given some cards genetically. Environmentally, you were given some.
So there's some you can trade. There's some you can't. I mean, at least did you play out the cards you could play and did you play the game to the best of your ability?
If the answer is yes, then they have this thing called ego integrity. They fully know who they are and they're comfortable in their own skin. What a wonderful thing. You actually can even see this person almost hold themselves with a great degree of pride. I'm going to tell you, if you've got that.
a person in your life that is 70 plus and they can answer the question, have I lived a good life with a yes, you need to be sitting at their feet, sitting beside them, listening and hanging on every word they say because they have more wisdom than you'll ever get from a college class. Now, one of the sad things in many cultures and in our culture, we often think, oh my, it's time for them just to head to Golden Corral and stay off the highway. But really, in most cultures, they're actually appreciated and looked at as wise people, as sages, as elders.
that should be treated with honor and respect. I hope you would do the same and learn from them. So this stage, again, they're still investing in life.
And for as many, they'll live their golden years. If they have their health and some money, they may actually retire and go do some things and really enjoy that. It might actually surprise you to know that this stage, for the most part, they're not that concerned about death.
When we look at death anxiety, we see that actually previous stages were much more worried about that. And one reason is because in the previous stages, there's often this idea of what if I don't get some of these goals done that I had accomplished and I want to be able to do these things. Whereas at the end of life, we've done a lot of those things and have more of an acceptance, overall acceptance with life. And so that end of life review, if you answer yes, what a powerful thing. If you answer no, then Erickson's going to say they experience despair.
OK, so it's called integrity versus despair. Despair. I didn't play some of the cards I should have played, or I played them poorly, or I just can't accept.
I just can't accept the life that I had. What a sad thing. Now see the difference in this stage and the previous stages. Yes, the previous stage I did a reflection too.
In this stage I did a review. But in the previous stage I had all these years to go make some changes. In this stage I don't. I mean, I can't call up my little boy and say, Hey buddy, you wanna go play baseball in the yard? I mean...
He's 45 years old at this point. Say, Dad, you're going to break a hip. No, we're not going to do that.
I can't tell my ex-wife, say, Honey, we really got things messed up. Let's try to rekindle this relationship. I don't have time to do those things. So we're left then with regret and resentment and despair.
And so you can kind of see how if some of these things don't go correctly in some of the previous stages, it leads up into this problem that we get into of despair. in our older life. One of my hopes is that you would live a life that when you look back on it, you'd say, man, I played my cards the best of my ability. I took some chances. I seized some opportunities.
I took some risks. And maybe all of them didn't pay off and maybe some of them were like some of my risks. They were abysmal failures.
But at least I want you to say that you were able to play your cards and you were able to give it all you had. Because I think you have a much better idea then of... of...
this idea of integrity, a much better chance at that. In fact, when we look at regret in life, most of our regrets aren't things that we did and messed up. Most of our regrets in life actually come from the things we wish we had done.
I hope that you're never one of those people that end up with regret of the things that you wish you had done. I hope that you've enjoyed kind of talking about Eric Erickson's psychosocial development, and you've seen that it's a stage theory that kind of develops over eight different stages. Yes, there are people that criticize Erickson's stages of development and, you know, believe that, you know, maybe it's not universal, things like that.
For the most part, it has endured the test of time much better than Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, though. And we see a lot of research really does support a lot of what Erickson talked about. Hope you've enjoyed these videos on Erickson and hope you live a life that you can say, yes, I did live a good life.