Theory of Ego Development

341 Words2 Pages
According to Loevinger’s Theory of Ego Development, the ego is the struggle to comprehend, understand, and organize the experiences of life (McAdams, 2006). The sense of self or ego changes based on experiences and challenges faced throughout life, and hence, the ego is in constant flux. Loevinger developed a theory based on the stages of cognitive development and how it influences the personality. Loevinger measures ego development through a verbal sentence completion test; this means that infants are unable to take the test. Though Loevinger does not specifically address the preverbal stage of ego development, other theorists agree that ego begins in infancy with the recognition of self. Loevinger believes early childhood to be continually stuck in impulsivity as self-expression; generally speaking, the impulsive stage is egocentric. The child is dependent, demanding, and the ego needs solely the satisfaction of one’s own needs and wants. The impulsive individual looks only to the present, not the past or future, and classifications are quite simple and generalized such as “good” versus “bad” or “mean to me” versus “good to me” (2006). The impulsive stage is followed by the self-protective stage in which an individual understands that it is in their best interest to follow rules most of the time. In early adolescence, many move from the egocentric preoccupation with oneself to that of the group, marking the ego development to that of the conformist stage. The conformist stage is where the child conforms to what society has deemed normal and seeks a close friend with whom the child can identify in similarities. Loevinger’s theory states the adolescent may enter into a transitional stage of conscientious/conformist in which the person breaks from peer groups through an increasing awareness of self. The increasing awareness of self and one’s inner life leads to the
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