Dr. Auerbach noted that Sidney Blatt proposed another stage, mutuality vs competition or cooperation vs alienation, a relational stage, to go between initiative vs guilt and industry vs inferiority.  In terms of the original Freudian model, this would have been a late Oedipal stage to go between the early Oedipal stage and the latency stage."

Would encouraging cooperative rather than competitive activities for boys around this time facilitate their socialization in school, improve achievement, reduce behavioral problems? Are cooperative activities like cub scouts better than competitive activities like sports in mastering this stage?

Damon

I would agree with you.

This is essentially a relational formulation of the Oedipal situation, which is fundamentally about competition, rivalry, and jealousy, about who loves whom more than whom else.  It presents us with a devil’s bargain in that the worst outcome of this particular competition is to win—to be more important to one of your parents than your parents are to each other.  In well-functioning families, the generational boundary is flexible but maintained.

Competition in the peer group is a different matter of course, and humans are a competitive species.  Still, long-term success in life involves relatedness as well as individuation and therefore involves cooperation as well as competition.  It is clear how much we stress competition in the socialization of boys and cooperation in the socialization of girls.