Erikson's formulation is a stage theory. "A stage is a development period during which characteristic patterns of behaviour are exhibited and certain capacities become established" (Weiten, 1995, p.432). Erikson partitioned the life span into eight stages, each stage consists of a psychosocial crisis or internal crises that must be faced. According to Erikson, this internal crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point of increased vulnerabil

ity and enhanced potential. The individual resolved a crisis between a positive and negative alternative. Resolution of a crisis does not mean that a person rejects one alternative completely, but rather, that he or she finds a balance between the two alternatives. The more an individual resolves the crises successfully, the healthier development will be.

Integrity versus despair is Erikson's eighth and final developmental stage (Erikson,1963, cited in Weiten, 1995), which individuals experience during late adulthood. In the later year of life, we look back and evaluate what we have done with our lives. Through many different routes, the older person may have developed a positive outlook in most of all of the previous stages of development. If so, the retrospective glances will reveal a picture of a life well spent, and the person will feel a sense of satisfaction-integrity will be achieved. If the older adult resolved many of the earlier stages negatively, the retrospective glances likely will yield doubt or gloom- the despair Erikson talks about.

Erikson's fifth stage, identity versus confusion (Erikson, 1963, cited in Weiten, 1995), occurs during adolescence, when we explore different possibilities for career, interests, friends, etc. Stage six, intimacy versus isolation (Erikson, 1963, cited in Weiten, 1995), occurs during the early adulthood years. We will tell more detail about two these stages in later.

Adolescence marks the final stage of child development since it is usually defined as the period between the end of childhood and beginning of adulthood (Weinman, 1987). The crisis during adolescence is to achieve identity and avoid confusion. It was adolescence that interested Erikson first and most, and the patterns he saw here were the bases for his thinking about all the other stages. Identity means knowing who you are and how you fit in to the rest of society. It requires that you take all you've learned about life and yourself and mould it into. Confusion means an uncertainty about one's place in society and the world. When an adolescent is confronted by role confusion, Erikson says he or she is suffering from an identity crisis. In fact, a common question adolescents in our society ask is a straight-forward question of identity: "Who am I?" At this age, adolescents are trying different behaviours and values from what they have learned at home. They may experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, minor crimes, new religions, and new hobbies. They are trying to define themselves separate from their parents, although, in the end, most adolescents adopt many of their parents' same values and behaviours as well as unique views of their own. The identity crisis of adolescence is the first time in which cognitive, physical, and social elements of one's environment enable one to begin to

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