Developmental Stages

Notebook and charts representing life stages

Behavioral Pathways aligns life-stage development with a simplified set of DevelopmentalCategory enums. These are used to scale event impact based on age and developmental context.

Stage Mapping

Stage Age Crisis DevelopmentalCategory
1 0-1 Trust vs Mistrust Trust
2 1-3 Autonomy vs Shame Autonomy (unused)
3 3-6 Initiative vs Guilt Initiative (unused)
4 6-12 Industry vs Inferiority Competence
5 12-18 Identity vs Confusion Identity
6 18-40 Intimacy vs Isolation Intimacy
7 40-65 Generativity vs Stagnation Generativity (unused)
8 65+ Integrity vs Despair Integrity

How It Is Used

When events are interpreted, the system applies developmental scaling based on the entity's age and the category associated with that event. This allows the same event type to be more impactful during sensitive stages (for example, identity-relevant events during adolescence).

Unused Categories

Some Erikson stages are represented but not yet mapped to event types (Autonomy, Initiative, Generativity). These are kept for completeness and future expansion.

Where It Lives in Code

The mapping is implemented in the DevelopmentalCategory enum and its From<EventType> conversion. See src/enums/developmental_category.rs in the core library for the authoritative mapping.