Objective 21| Identify Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development and their accompanying issues. Erik Erikson proposed that we pass through eight stages in life (loosely associated with age), each with its own psychosocial task. In infancy (to 1 year), the issue is trust versus mistrust; in toddlerhood (1 to 2 years), the issue is autonomy versus shame and doubt. Preschoolers (3 to 5) learn initiative or guilt, and elementary school children (6 to puberty), competence or inferiority. A chief task of adolescence (teens to twenties) is solidifying one’s sense of self—one’s identity. For young adults (twenties to early forties), the issue is intimacy versus isolation, and for middle adulthood (forties to sixties), generativity versus stagnation. Late adulthood’s (late sixties and up) task is integrity versus despair.