As humans age, according to Erik Erikson, they go through developmental stages that help create and transform their personalities. If needs are met and the ego is gratified, the individual is able to move on to the next challenge. They march forward in life and on stage until they find the final level: integrity versus desperation. This was classified as adults aged 65 and older by Erikson. Here, people must remember and judge their lives in terms of their merit or disappointment. Erikson himself had a lot to analyze in his final years. Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany, just after the turn of the twentieth century. It is known that he was the product of an affair outside of marriage. He only discovered this later in life and it may have been his original inspiration for developing his psychosocial and personality theories. In the 1930s, Erikson attended a psychoanalytic school with Anna Freud, the daughter of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. There he learned how to penetrate a person's mind and access their deeply held fears and feelings. He then moved to the United States after graduation to escape the Nazis (Erik Erikson, 2011). Without the equivalent of a college degree, Erikson has accomplished some extraordinary feats. He was the first child psychoanalyst in Boston, worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a professor at both Harvard and Yale (2011). During this time he observed and created his most famous theory, the stages of psychosocial development. There are eight stages in total in his theory (Johnston, 2009). The idea is that as you get older, you face a conflict specific to each stage. If they face these conflicts head-on and achieve positive results, old age depends on today's decisions and results. Works Cited Berk, L. (2010). Development across the lifespan (5th ed.). (J. Mosher, ed.) Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon.Erik Erikson. (2011, September 4). Retrieved September 4, 2011, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_EriksonErikson's stages of psychosocial development. (2011, September 1). Retrieved September 4, 2011, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson's_stages_of_psychosocial_developmentHarder, A.F. (2002 (revised 2009)). Erik Erikson's stages of development. Retrieved September 4, 2011, from Learing Place Online.com: http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htmJohnston, J.E. (2009). The Complete Guide to the Psychology of Idiots (4th ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Alpha Books.