Everybody Loves Raymond and Psychology
Gaven D. Crosby
Pennsylvania College of Technology
I am doing my paper on Everybody Loves Raymond and the stages of development that this show depicts. Throughout the show we see many different stages; autonomy vs. shame, generativity vs. stagnation, and ego integrity vs despair. We see these expressed through the children, Ray, Debra, Frank, Marie and Robert. As we age we will grow and work through each one of these stages. This show is a great depiction of the stages because it has characters of all ages.
The first stage I will look at is autonomy vs. shame. The characters that exemplify this are the children, Ally, Michael, and Jeffery. The children in several episodes are yelled at and they are taught right from wrong. I recall one particular episode where Ally is extremely defiant and Ray nor Debra can get her to behave. So…show more content… stagnation. We see this stage expressed in Raymond. There is an episode where Raymond is having a mid-life crisis. It starts with Ray noticing that he is no longer six foot tall and is only five foot and three quarters. Ray eventually is playing basketball with his friends and realizes that he is no longer as good as he used to be. Ray brings up his issue to his friends and they advise him to make a list of 100 things to do before he dies. He ends up developing goals and some things he wants to accomplish. On his list are some things that Debra criticizes and makes fun of. His list consisted of foods he wanted to eat, never puking again, and to not get an enlarged prostate. Debra assists him in finding some other goals that are more meaningful. She explains that maybe the reason he doesn’t have any real goals right now is because he has accomplished more than he has ever thought he could and he is content where he was. This makes him wonder if this is all its ever going to be. Ray then proceeds to talk to Debra about his wish to be