Both of these theories stem from the works of Sigmund Freud. Freud studied both conscious and unconscious influences on cognitive and social development. His main emphasis was on the development of personality in the conscious and unconscious mind. Freud believed that there are three structures: the id, one's instincts; the ego, where rational decisions are made; and the superego, the conscience. These three structures function together in both the conscious and unconscious mind; the id, functions in the unconscious and the ego and superego f

Piaget believes that an individual needs to progress through an entire stage before moving on to the next stage whereas, Erikson believes that an individual can be dealing with more than one stage at a time. Quite often if one of Erikson's developmental stages is not resolved positively, an individual will battle with it until a resolution is met. Self-understanding can influence development on the cognitive level as well. Self-understanding is defined as how an adolescent sees themself; it's their cognitive representation of themself. For example, an adolescent may see themself as a 13 year old boy who is a student, plays hockey, belongs to a family, likes girls and likes to hang out with his friends. Though not the whole personal identity, self-understanding is how the adolescent views themselves in terms of membership labeling. This, of course, is affected both consciously and unconsciously.

Erikson, like Freud, believes that each individual goes through numerous stages of development. Another theory of Freud's focuses on the psychosexual stages that occur within the first five years of life; Erikson expands on this by claiming that an individual goes through 8 different stages that are on going throughout one's life span. Each stage is considered to be a crisis where some sort of conflict resolution needs to be reached before progressing to the next stage; "the more an individual resolves the crisis successfully, the healthier that individual's development will be" (Santrock 42).

unction in both states of mind. Freud found that through studying his patients, many of their problems could not be solved just by looking at the id, ego and the superego. He felt he needed to look further into their development as a child and the particular stages each person goes through as a child.

An adolescent is at Erikson's identity versus identity confusion stage and at a transition from Piaget's concrete operational to formal operational stage; this can be trying considering all of the factors involved in shaping an adolescent at this level. In school, adolescents are beginning to solidify concrete operational skills while forming formal operational skills such as abstract thinking. Geometry and algebra are introduced at the middle school level and depending on how far along an adolescent is in their transition, school can be a difficult adventure and very differ

Some common words found in the essay are:
Erikson Piaget's, Erikson Freud, Freud Freud, Jean Piaget, , operational stage, versus identity confusion, identity versus identity, stage development, stage lasts, versus identity, life span, identity versus, believes individual, formal operational, concrete operational, conscious unconscious, Erik Erikson, Erikson Jean, erikson jean piaget, formal operational stage, conscious unconscious mind,
Approximate Word count = 1607
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)