system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Trying to understand Eriksons theory

How does someone move through the stages in Eriksons identity  theory?
gpt
It's important to recognize that Erikson's stages are not as clear and discreet as they are often made out to be.  They were never intended to represent discontinuous tasks in a fixed order, just a simplified representation of dilemmas that tend to be more prominent in particular times of life.  Questions of identity neither begin nor end with adolescence, for example.  That just tends to be the phase of life where questions of identity are most central.

That being said, "moving through the stages" mostly seems to depend on cognitive development and changes in life circumstances, rather than anything to do with the archetypal dilemmas of the stages.  For instance, a baby is considered to have moved from the infancy stage to the early childhood stage not when they have resolved the "trust vs mistrust" task, but when they achieve a higher level of cognitive development and become able to interact with the world in new and more active ways.  Likewise, one typically moves from the middle adulthood to older adulthood stage when one hits the retirement/empty nest phase of life where what one should be doing with one's time is not always so clear.