Theoretical and clinical integration of Luria's thesis of cognitive development and Erikson's psychosocial stage

The ideological gap between Western and Marxist psychology is of paradigmatic proportions, and few attempts were made to bridge it. However, recently, Vygotsky's/Luria's cognitive psychology has overshadowed Piagetian psychology, but in spite of this new prominence, Vygotskean psychology continues to suffer from a shortcoming: Its underplaying of personality factors. Simultaneously, Erikson's psychosocial thesis also gained prominence over traditional Freudian theory, but it too suffers from another shortcoming: It does not account for cognitive development. Since Luria and Erikson's theses are perhaps two of the most widely recognized conceptualizations of cognitive and personality development today, and since they belong to radically different worldviews, they were included in this theoretical and clinical integration. The objective of this integration is to bridge the gap between these two models in order to obtain more comprehensive psychological knowledge.;In order to check the validity of Luria and Erikson's theses individually and also as part of the integration, Grounded Theory, a qualitative method used to develop theories directly from the data, was used. A sample of Canadian-born Muslim Lebanese late adolescents/young adults from Edmonton, Alberta, participated in this study. This research shows that substantive theory is very comparable to Luria's and Erikson's formal theses. The value of the integration and its implications for future research, and especially for developmental and cross-cultural psychology, are discussed.