Psychology Case Study

Psychology: Case Study – Eric B. Essay, Research Paper

Case History of Eric B.

Eric is a 6-year old African-american male who was raised in an impoverished inner city neighborhood in Chicago. Drugs and violence surrounded his daily life. With a single-mother who involved herself in a series of relationships with abusive boyfriends, Eric found himself beat with a belt, and may have been sexually assaulted. His mother was not home that often, and he was forced to sit outside on the stoop so that his grandmother, that also lived with them, could sell drugs. His mother was uneducated and supported the family with her public assistance grant. He has never met his father, and his uncles are in jail. His father was convicted of robbery and drug charges but Eric was told that he was shot to death in an attempted robbery. He dreams of one day avenging his father’s death and acts it out when he plays alone. He has a history of terrorizing animals and killed the family cat. He also did poorly in school, being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. He is constantly involved in fights and has no companions. When home, he mostly involved himself in action movies and cartoons. Eric b efriends a boy who lived next door to him. One day he steals the boys bicycle and when the family comes to claim it, Eric threate ns the boy by saying that he was going to kill his baby brother. A few weeks later, Eric broke into the apartment and assaulted the baby, beating him nearly to death.

According to Eric Erikson, a student of Freud, his psychosocial theory states that you have to move through stages of development to have your needs met. One needs to be psychologically ready to move on to the next stage. This depends on the social environment they are in Eric, being six years old is in the iniative vs. guilt stage of Erikson’s Stage Theories. In this stage, he is suppose to be ready to take iniative in his own activities and make plans and goals for the future. If his mother does not allow him to take iniative then he will feel guilt for his attempts at independence. He may also be in the industry vs. inferiority stage. This means he should be aware of his responsibilities such as homework and chores. He should be able create a sense of industry, if praised and rewarded by his mother. If not, then he will feel inferior. He would also be influenced by his peers and teachers.

However, this is merely how is should be, but is not how it is for Eric. Lack of iniative is not the problem. Without a parental figure present, Eric was forced to take on too much iniative and make too many decisions on is own. He feels no guilt in being independent but according to Erikson, should feel inferior due to the lack of praise and reward from his mother.

According to Jean Piaget, and his stages of cognitive development, kids construct their knowledge of the world through reorganization and they move to higher levels of psychological functioning. Piaget looked at how kids think of themselves and their environment, when moving through each stage. In these stages, children select what they see and they interpret. In the preoperational stage, ranging from ages 2-7, children should have a mastery of language and use words to represent objects. In this stage, children cannot use developmental capacities systematically. They are quite egocentric, having the tendency to interpret the world through your own position. They attribute their own thoughts to inanimate objects, known as animism. For example, a child may say that the sky is sad because the sun is not shining. They have no sense of centration, a tendency to concentrate on one aspect of a problem, like having tunnel vision. These are called conservation studies, which are a series of tests for children to test their concepts of length, quantity, area, and volume. For example, if you were to place two glasses in front of a child, one tall and thin, the other short and stout, filled with the same amount of liquid in each, he will think the tall one contains more liquid because the glass looks full.

In the story, Eric is in the preoperational stage of Piaget’s cognitive development stages. Eric is probably not moving to a higher level of psychological functioning. He seems to have trouble socializing. He has no friends at school and is constantly getting into fights with his peers. I feel he is unstable, both emotionally and psychologically.

When dealing with Mead’s theory of development, he says we learn through two stages. These two stages are the play stage and the game stage. In the play stage, usually infancy to age four, we imitate others behaviors and there seem to be no rules. The game stage, commonly age five through twelve, children play games like hide and go seek, tag, and there is a lot of group involvement among peers. Rules and regulations are important in this stage. According to Mead, in order to take on the role of another you need to know the rules to play. This leads to taking on the role of the generalized other, which means children know general morals, values, and rules of his or her particular culture.

In the story, Eric seems to have been left in the play stage, when according to Mead, should, be in the game stage due to his age. He does not seem to have any rules to abide by which is part of the description of the play stage. If Eric was in the game stage, he would be playing games lik