The Epigenetic Theory

Erik Erikson was a psychologist who came up with the theory that everyone goes through eight stages of psychosocial development in their lifetime. This theory is called the “epigenetic principle.” How we go through each stage is determined by the situations, or development “tasks,” in our lives. Each stage has a task that is referred to with a two-word phrase, such as ‘trust-mistrust’ in the infant’s stage. Also, each stage has what is called an ‘optimal time,’ which means that each stage can only happen at certain times in the person’s life. No stages can be skipped, but the time it takes to go through each stage can vary. The eight stages, and the approximate ages for them are:

1. Oral-sensory stage - ages 0 to 1Ѕ

2. Anal-muscular stage - ages 2 to 3

3. Genital-locomotor stage - ages 3 to 6

4. Latency stage - ages 7 to 12

5. Adolescence - ages 12 to 18

6. Young adulthood - ages 20 to about 27

7. Middle adulthood - ages 27 to about 50

8. Maturity - age 50 and over

After watching “Walk The Line,” the film about the life of singer Johnny Cash, it is easy to distinguish the psychosocial stages of Johnny Cash’s life. There were a few stages left out of the film, but it is fairly simple to hypothesize about what occurred during those stages based on everything else the film shows. Just about every major turning point in Johnny Cash’s life is depicted in the film, so it is safe to say that this is a good film to analyze.

The first of the eight stages of psychosocial development, the oral-sensory stage, is not shown in the film. However, this is the stage where the child makes the trust-mistrust turn, and judging by Johnny Cash’s personality in the rest of the film, his first stage went towards the “mistrust” side. His father never seemed to want to get close to him, so I would guess that he did the same thing during Johnny’s first year or so. The distance between him and his father probably made Johnny less able to trust adults in his early life.

It’s hard to tell whether the second or third stage was depicted in the film, but my guess is that if they were, only the very ends of the stages were shown. These stages, the anal-muscular stage and the genital-locomotor stage, areen the child tries to establish a certain level of independence. Johnny probably spent much of his toddler years learning about the rules of his family, maybe developing a basic sense of right and wrong. His father most likely left Johnny’s mother to take care of Johnny alone, so Johnny was probably able to figure a lot of things out for himself at this stage. In the third stage, a child is supposed to make a decision between ruthlessness and inhibition, and judging by his later life, Johnny chose ruthlessness.

The fourth stage, called the latency stage, is when the film really starts to show details about Johnny Cash’s life. This stage is when a child is supposed to develop their sense of responsibility. The child is also supposed to make a decision between narrow virtuosity and inertia. Johnny’s decision is never really clear to me, but if I had to pick one, it would be narrow virtuosity. He spends a lot of time later in his life working to support himself and a family, and also trying to get his career going, which tells me that he always would rather work hard than be lazy. Johnny tries his best to make his father proud, but often does not succeed. He developed into a boy that was always day-dreaming, and leaned toward the artistic side of things. When he was 10 years old, his older brother, Jack, was killed in a wood-cutting accident, and Johnny never seemed to get over that, and always blamed himself for it because he left his brother alone. Immediately before Jack’s death, Johnny’s father