Ego Integrity

Abstract

Most scholarship on ego integrity has grown out of Erik Erikson's early presentation of his theory of life‐cycle development. However, at the end of a long career, Erikson rearticulated his theory and described three structural principles that weave together the well‐known eight thematic tensions, over eight stages of life: Dynamic Balance of Opposites, Vital Involvement, and Life in Time. Review of the empirical research indicates that ego integrity has been operationalized in a number of ways, in an attempt to understand what older individuals actually do to consolidate a sense of coherence and come to terms with the life they have lived so far. This research suggests a growing recognition that studying lifelong processes of reworking and preworking psychosocial themes may be more important than investigating stage sequentiality.

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