When I am working with a client or a parent, I sometimes talk with them about what a person needs to learn over their lifespan and whether life circumstances prevented a person from completing the developmental task appropriate to a certain age or stage. Trust and hope, autonomy and will, initiative and purpose, industry and competence, identity and fidelity, intimacy and love, generativity and care, ego integrity and wisdom: These are the qualities developmental psychologist Erik Erikson believed an ideal adult acquires throughout a lifetime.
Nerd that I am, I love psychology theory. Wikipedia summarizes Erik Erkson’s Theory of Human Development as follows: