Erik Erikson was greatly influenced by Freud and his daughter Anna while specializing in human development. However, instead of focusing attention on the id, as Freud did, Erikson developed his theories of psychosocial development around the ego, ultimately creating the field of ego psychology. Erikson's work has been popular with students and many other members of the general public and includes many useful insights for understanding many stages of people's lives. This article will further explore Erikson's eight stages, as well as the research surrounding them, the identity states that arise from them, and the field of Psychohistory developed using ego psychology as a foundation. Erikson theorized eight stages of ego development, where the first four stages are closely related to the Freudian oral, anal, phallic and latency stages, except that Erikson in these stages places less emphasis on sexual conflicts, but more on social experiences of the individual (Ryckman, 2013). The first phase is the oral-sensory phase, which takes place from birth to about one year of age. The conflict in this stage is basic trust versus mistrust of the child's mother. Identity diffusion occurs when an individual has no firm commitments and is not actively in crisis. In a sense, this individual is devoid of identity and, therefore, expresses a wide variety of negative emotional states. Then there is foreclosure, which is when an individual has never been in crisis, but still maintains a firm grip on their beliefs and values. Moratorium occurs when a person is currently in crisis and is actively seeking alternatives to try to make a decision about their beliefs and values. The achievement of identity occurs when one has gone through and resolved one's own crisis favorably, resulting in the affirmation of values ​​and