Erik Erikson was a follower of Freud’s ideas and started his own theory using Freud’s ideas. Erikson’s theory is called the psychosocial theory of child development. Erikson used Freud’s idea of the id, ego, and superego and his stages of development to build his own theory. Erikson thought that the ego was “of the utmost importance”. The ego was important because it lets children become an individual and add to society. Erikson added more stages to his theory than Freud did, and some of his stages are similar to Freud’s. Erikson ended up with eight stages in his theory. Every stage has a problem between two different feelings. A child's personality is shaped by how they fix each problem.