| Course | NR 501 Theoretical Basis for Advanced Nursing Practice |
|---|---|
| Week | 6 |
| Paper type | Borrowed theory critique |
| Length | About 1,340 words, 4 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 501 Week 6
Erikson's Eighth Stage Crossing Into Nursing: What Integrity Versus Despair Was Built to Explain, What Structured Life Review Kept, and the Conditions That Fell Away
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 501: Theoretical Basis for Advanced Nursing Practice
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Erikson's Eighth Stage Crossing Into Nursing: What Integrity Versus Despair Was Built to Explain, What Structured Life Review Kept, and the Conditions That Fell Away
Two Accounts, Side by Side
Nursing borrows theory from many fields, and a borrowed theory changes as it crosses. This critique follows one crossing: Erik Erikson's eighth stage of psychosocial development, integrity versus despair, from its statement in developmental psychology into nursing's use of structured life review with older adults. The theory matters for my own term's work because Reed built her self-transcendence theory partly by reformulating life-span developmental psychology (Reed, 1991), and Erikson is the best-known figure in that tradition.
The critique holds two accounts next to each other. The first is the theory as Erikson stated it. The second is what nursing made of it, through the work of Barbara Haight, a nurse researcher who developed and tested a structured life review for older adults. Between the two, the paper records what was kept, what was renamed and what was dropped.
Back to the Original
Erikson set out his eight stages of the human life cycle in Childhood and Society (Erikson, 1963). Each stage is described as a tension between two opposing tendencies, and the eighth, belonging to old age, is the tension between ego integrity and despair. Integrity, as Erikson described it, is the acceptance of one's one and only life cycle as something that had to be, without wishing it had been otherwise, together with a sense of connection to other people and times. Despair, in his account, is the sense that too little time remains to live differently or look for another route to integrity, and it tends to show itself as dread of death or as disgust.
Three features of the original are easy to lose. First, the stage is placed at the end of a sequence; how a person meets it depends on how the earlier tensions were resolved. Second, the two poles are not pass and fail. Erikson treated each stage as a balance, in which some of the negative pole is part of a healthy outcome; a person with no despair at all would not be facing their situation honestly. Third, the stage is tied to old age, as the last in a normative life cycle, and was not described for people facing death early.
What It Was Built to Explain
Erikson's framework was built to explain the development of the ego across a whole life in relation to society. It came out of clinical psychoanalytic work, observations of children and adolescents, and cross-cultural fieldwork, and it was offered as a description of the normal course of development rather than as a treatment. The eighth stage was the last piece of that account: an explanation of what psychological work remains at the end of a long life, and what a good or poor resolution of that work looks like.
It was not built to explain the effect of any intervention. Nothing in the original claims that a clinician can move a person from despair to integrity, and the stage's own logic suggests that the outcome depends heavily on the whole life that came before. That is the first gap to watch in the crossing.
What Nursing Made of It
Life review as a therapeutic idea came first from psychiatry. Butler (1963) described reminiscence in older people not as a sign of decline but as a natural process, prompted by approaching death, in which past experiences and unresolved conflicts are returned to and can be reintegrated. Butler's account fits readily with Erikson's eighth stage, and later writers joined the two.
Haight (1988) turned the idea into a nursing intervention and tested it. In a study of 60 homebound older adults, one group received a structured life review over eight weeks, a second received friendly visits, and a third received only testing before and after. The life review group showed significant improvement in life satisfaction and psychological well-being compared with the others. Nursing texts and later studies have presented structured life review as a way of helping older adults achieve ego integrity, with Erikson as the theoretical basis.
Something is renamed in that crossing. The outcome Erikson described was integrity, a balanced acceptance of one's life. The outcomes Haight measured were life satisfaction and psychological well-being. They are related, and a person who has reached integrity may well report higher life satisfaction. But they are not the same concept, and a study showing that life review raises life satisfaction has not shown that it moves a person along Erikson's eighth stage.
Who Does the Acting
In Erikson's account, the person does the developmental work, within a social world that supports or hinders it. In the nursing intervention, the nurse leads a structured process, with set questions, a sequence through life stages and a fixed number of visits. The person's work still happens, but it happens inside a frame the nurse supplies.
This shift is not a flaw; it is what makes the theory usable in practice. But it adds an assumption the original did not make: that integrity can be facilitated from outside, in a matter of weeks, rather than being the outcome of a lifetime. Reed's theory handles this more carefully, describing the nurse as facilitating self-transcendence rather than producing it (Reed, 1991). Nursing uses of Erikson are not always so careful, and papers that describe life review as "promoting ego integrity" have moved the actor without saying so.
Assumptions, Not Concepts
The deepest problems in the crossing lie in assumptions rather than concepts. Erikson's model assumes a normative sequence of stages, broadly the same for everyone, with old age last. It was developed largely from a mid-twentieth-century Western perspective, and critics have long questioned whether its sequence fits women's lives, lives in other cultures, or lives disrupted by illness or poverty.
For my population, the most important assumption is timing. Many of my patients are dying in their forties and fifties, as Ms. L. was in my Week 5 application. Applying the eighth stage to them assumes they face the same task as an 80-year-old, while their earlier stages, generativity in particular, may be unfinished. A 54-year-old mother worried about her daughter is doing work Erikson would place in the seventh stage, not the eighth. Nursing uses that apply integrity versus despair to all dying patients, regardless of age, have dropped the condition that made the stage coherent.
The balance assumption has also slipped. When nursing papers describe despair as a problem to be reduced, they treat the poles as a scale with one good end. Erikson did not. Some grief and regret at the end of life are, on his account, part of an honest integrity, and a nurse trying to eliminate them may be working against the outcome the theory values.
The Use That Is Left
After the critique, a narrower use remains, and it is a real one. Erikson's eighth stage is a good lens for listening to older adults near the end of life: it tells the nurse to attend to how a person is making sense of their whole life and to expect a mix of acceptance and regret rather than one or the other. Structured life review, as Haight tested it, is a reasonable intervention for older adults, with evidence that it improves life satisfaction and well-being.
What should not be claimed is that life review produces ego integrity, that integrity versus despair describes dying younger adults, or that despair is a symptom to be removed. For my own work, the critique confirms the choice of Reed's theory, which kept what was useful in the developmental tradition, the possibility of growth late in life, while dropping the fixed sequence and the tie to old age.
References
Butler, R. N. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26(1), 65-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1963.11023339
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). W. W. Norton.
Haight, B. K. (1988). The therapeutic role of a structured life review process in homebound elderly subjects. Journal of Gerontology, 43(2), P40-P44. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/43.2.p40
Reed, P. G. (1991). Toward a nursing theory of self-transcendence: Deductive reformulation using developmental theories. Advances in Nursing Science, 13(4), 64-77. https://doi.org/10.1097/00012272-199106000-00008
What the NR 501 Week 6 assignment asks for
The Week 6 critique has you examine a theory borrowed from another discipline and how nursing has applied it. Points are attached to the original theory, what it was designed to explain, how nursing adapted it, what changed in the adaptation, its usefulness and limits, and APA. Report the original from its own source, not from nursing summaries. Say what the theory was built to explain and what it does not claim. Follow the crossing through specific nursing uses. Notice where an outcome was renamed or the actor changed. Look for the strongest objections in dropped assumptions rather than concepts. End with the narrower use that survives, and what should not be claimed.
How the NR 501 Week 6 example is put together
The opening explains that borrowed theories change as they cross and introduces the two accounts. The original section reports Erikson's eight stages from Childhood and Society and three features easily lost: the stage's place in a sequence, its tension between two poles and its social setting. The purpose section explains that the framework explains ego development across a life, not intervention effects. The nursing section follows Butler's 1963 reinterpretation of reminiscence and Haight's test of structured life review, noting that integrity became life satisfaction. The actor section explains how the nurse now leads the work. The assumptions section addresses dying people in their forties and fifties and despair treated as a symptom. The last section keeps life review as a listening lens.
Reading the NR 501 Week 6 grading rubric
Borrowed theory critique rubrics in NR 501 typically score an accurate account of the original theory, analysis of its adaptation, identification of what changed, critical evaluation, conclusions about appropriate use and APA. Going back to the original is the row this critique is built on, and it earns credit by reporting Erikson from his own book before any nursing source. Adaptation is credited through Butler and Haight. What changed scores through the renamed outcome and the shifted actor. Critical evaluation earns points by locating problems in assumptions about timing and balance. The conclusion is credited for a narrower use and explicit limits. Four references, including Reed for context, complete APA.
Common NR 501 Week 6 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Critiques written entirely from nursing sources give the argument away early, because the theory is only seen through people who had already adopted it. Another loss is treating every change in the crossing as a failure, when some changes are what make the theory usable. Students also describe the theory without saying what it was built to explain, or criticize concepts while missing the assumptions underneath. The critique does not have to conclude that the borrowing fails. To find where a theory came from, follow citations back to the original book or article. A theory developed in nursing with ideas from elsewhere can count as borrowed if your course allows it. Name the theory and an NR 501 critique can go back to its source.
Get a NR 501 Week 6 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 6 instructions and the rubric, and name the theory your section assigned along with the field it came from. A custom critique written to those requirements is returned inside 24 to 48 hours, the first at no charge. If the prompt asks you to defend the borrowing rather than to question it, say so and it gets built that way.
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NR 501 Week 6 questions, answered
Does the critique have to conclude that the borrowing fails?
No, and a paper arguing that the theory transfers well can score just as high, provided the argument is actually done. What fails is the conclusion reached without any condition being examined. If you find the assumptions hold, name the ones you checked and say which nursing situations they hold for, since a theory that transfers everywhere is being described rather than tested.
How do I find where a theory came from?
Follow the citations backward until they stop pointing at other people. Nursing articles usually cite a nursing restatement, which cites an earlier one, and three or four steps back sits the original publication in psychology, education, sociology or management. That original is where the conditions and the study population are printed, and it is often shorter and plainer than anything written about it since.
My theory was developed inside nursing but uses ideas from elsewhere. Is that borrowed?
Usually it counts as a nursing theory with imported components, and saying so precisely beats forcing it into one category. Name the imported ideas, cite where they came from, and check those pieces the way the week asks. Some sections define the term narrowly, so read the prompt before deciding, and where it stays ambiguous the safer paper explains its own reading in a line.
Where can I find a free NR 501 Week 6 sample paper?
This page shows the complete Week 6 critique of Erikson's eighth stage in nursing, with the original, its purpose, the crossing through Butler and Haight, the dropped assumptions, the remaining use and four references.
Which assumption matters most for the writer's patients in the NR 501 Week 6 critique?
Timing, because Erikson places integrity versus despair at the end of a long life, while many of the writer's oncology patients are dying in their forties and fifties.