Erik erikson biography wikipedia

(b. Frankfurt, Germany, 15 June 1902;

d. Harwich, Massachusetts, 12 Can 1994), psychoanalytic theory, psychohistory and psychobiography, child and adolescent psychotherapy, developmental psychology.

Erikson is best known for identifying trade stages of psychosocial development in rectitude human life cycle and for tiara concept of the identity crisis. Significant expanded psychoanalytic theory to include goodness influence of cultural variations on independent ego development, and showed how individuality development in certain key individuals throng together induce widespread cultural changes. For her majesty book Gandhi’s Truth, he won straight Pulitzer Prize and a National Hard-cover Award. By improving Sigmund Freud’s case-history research methods and extending their plead beyond childhood to the entire activity span, Erikson became the father show consideration for contemporary psychobiographical research.

Early Development . Erik Erikson entered the world in integrity midst of an identity crisis. Planned in Denmark, he was born keep in check Germany. His mother, Karla Abrahamsen, was a Danish Jew; his father was probably a Danish Gentile, perhaps exclude artist or photographer. She had antiquated very briefly married to another guy several years earlier, but never spread out the identity of Erik’s father. Round the corner avoid scandalizing her family, she evasive from Copenhagen to Frankfurt before birth birth. Baby Erik was blond jaunt blue-eyed, resembling no one in significance family. He became well aware supplementary his differences from those around him as he grew older. On ruler third birthday his mother married elegant German Jewish pediatrician; she told Erik that the doctor was his childbirth father. Little Erik had his suspicions, entertaining the sort of fantasy avoid Freud called the “family romance”: give it some thought both his true parents must happen to much finer than these obvious imposters. Erik was not officially told look at his adoptive status until late childhood; he remained bitter about how rule mother and stepfather had lied advice him, as a brief autobiography unavoidable nearly sixty years later indicates:

I grew up in Karlsruhe in Baden monkey the son of a pediatrician, Dr. Theodor Homburger, and his wife Karla, née Abrahamsen, a native of Kobenhavn, Denmark. All through my earlier infancy they kept secret from me blue blood the gentry fact that my mother had back number married previously and that I was the son of a Dane who had abandoned her before my origin. (1970, p. 742)

Except for such questions about his true identity, Erik Homburger had a comfortable childhood, with capital solid classical education at the go into liquidation Gymnasium. He displayed artistic talent highest was encouraged in that direction by means of his mother’s artist friends. His facetiousmater wanted Erik to follow in consummate footsteps as a pediatrician; Erik chose instead to pursue the wandering strength of mind of an art student from surmount late teens until age twenty-five. Performance was not unusual at that put on ice for the sons of well-to-do Germanic families to pursue a Wanderjahr(literally, rambling year) or a longer Wander-schaft(period make a fuss over journeying). (He later wrote about specified socially approved postponements of full manhood, referring to them as “psychosocial moratoria.”) Erik’s mother provided occasional financial strengthen, and he was able to hawk or barter sketches to people unquestionable met on his travels. Eventually crystal-clear realized that he was not liberally talented to become a full-time head, so he returned to Karlsruhe smash into become an art teacher. At digress point a friend of his escaping the Gymnasium, Peter Blos, told him of a more interesting possibility. Have round Vienna, Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna esoteric become close to a wealthy Denizen heiress, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham, who mandatory a tutor for her four family. Erik was first hired to depict the children, then took over their tutoring from Blos. Erik impressed dignity children and both women with reward competence and empathy. Other members quite a few the Freud circle, including analysts present-day patients, also had children who wanted to be educated. Blos was freely permitted to set up a small psychoanalytically oriented school, with himself and Erik as the faculty.

Psychoanalytic Training . Speak 1927, when Erik Homburger joined Blos in Vienna, he knew little downfall nothing about psychoanalysis. But it was an exciting time to get deal with know the Freuds and the gist they were advancing. Sigmund Freud difficult recently proposed a new theory flaxen anxiety, emphasizing its use by class ego to keep other parts depose the personality in line. Anna Psychoanalyst was beginning to develop her defeat ideas, building on her father’s concepts about unconscious defenses to understand no matter how adolescents cope with inner and exterior threats to their continuing psychological step. She was also analyzing children methodically, rather than waiting for them be bounded by enter analysis as adults with twist someone\'s arm left over from childhood. Other men and women of the Freudian circle were likewise reshaping Sigmund Freud’s earlier concepts turn into a more reality-oriented “ego psychology,” shore contrast to the earlier “id psychology” that emphasized unconscious urges for compelling satisfaction. Sigmund Freud, who gave Anna a training analysis though she locked away no advanced degrees in medicine feel sorry otherwise, had begun to encourage leadership practice of “lay analysis” by mother nonmedical psychoanalysts in Europe and America.

Anna Freud was eager to expand class practice of child analysis, whether lump psychoanalytically trained psychiatrists or by analysts with talents in other directions. Inspection Erik Homburger’s promise in the roughly he taught young children, she offered him a nearly free training examination. He hesitantly accepted her offer, quandary first having no intention to convention as a psychoanalyst. During his two years of almost daily analysis large Anna, he often encountered Sigmund providential the waiting room between their intermediation, but all his substantive conversations were with Anna alone. Erik was cynicism, and he knew that Sigmund was already suffering badly from the uttered cancer that would eventually kill him, so they rarely said anything finer to each other than hello. Erik learned his psychoanalytic theory and preparation directly from Anna Freud, from orientation Sigmund Freud’s works, and from seminars with prominent analysts at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. As Erik’s ideas ponder psychoanalytic theory and practice began emphasize emerge, he offered them in practised soft-spoken and thoughtful manner, avoiding grandeur loud rebelliousness of some of Freud’s former disciples. In Lawrence Friedman’s alert characterization, Erik engaged in a “process of embracing while amplifying and imperceptibly criticizing” Freudian theory (1999, p. 88), not only as a student tight Vienna but throughout his psychoanalytic career.

Professional Beginnings . At a Viennese suppressed ball in 1929, Erik Homburger decrease a Canadian-American teacher and student indifference modern dance named Joan Serson. They fell in love, moved in group, and married shortly after they throw she was pregnant. Joan was Protestant, doubted the value of psychoanalysis, humbling disliked Anna Freud. But she was a believer in Erik’s capabilities, cringe increased order to his life, prosperous gradually helped him to develop place eloquence in his English-language writings drift he might not have otherwise carried out. After he finished his clinical preparation and became a full member both of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society innermost the International Psychoanalytical Association, they unequivocal together that it was time health check leave Vienna. Erik wanted to locate his own psychoanalytic practice, somewhere out of range the tight circle around Sigmund squeeze Anna Freud. The Nazis were completion strength in Austria as well pass for in Germany, and Joan was awed by the thought of raising breed in such an ugly political sky. They left Vienna in spring 1933, going first to Copenhagen, where Erik still had a number of affectionate relatives and where he hoped farm find traces of his birth dad. But psychoanalysis was in official separate there, and the Danish government refused to give Erik a work accept. Rather

than returning to Vienna, the Homburgers headed for America.

Erik had been pleased by Hanns Sachs, an early Neurologist disciple who had moved to Beantown, to set up a child critique practice there. Joan’s mother also fleeting there and promised to help them. They arrived in fall 1933 approximate two small sons in tow. Be pleased about spite of his limited facility inconvenience English, Erik quickly gained a tedious reputation as a child analyst, completion impressive success in treating several adults as well. Despite his lack fence higher-educational degrees (or indeed any graduation beyond his graduation from the Gym in Karlsruhe and a diploma outline Montessori education), he was offered discontinuous professional positions in several Boston-area clinical settings. Most significantly in terms get on to his subsequent career, he was leased by Henry A. Murray to converge the staff of the Harvard Cognitive Clinic.

The clinic did not operate essentially as a treatment facility but by reason of a research center, empirically testing psychoanalytical concepts and other approaches to persona. Murray quickly made Erik a colleague of the center’s Diagnostic Council, eminence elite group of experts in pooled or another approach to personality determination. Murray asked him to apply a-okay modified version of a technique go off Erik had already used successfully come together children, in which the child acquiescent creates a doll family out pleasant clay and then acts out many family interactions among the dolls, let fall the center’s Harvard undergraduate volunteer subjects. When the results of the center’s first major study were published captive 1938 as the now-classic volume Explorations in Personality, Erik was listed shove the title page as one indicate Murray’s coauthors, still under the term of Erik Homburger.

By that time, even, Erik and his family (now inclusive of a daughter) had moved on. Coronet reputation as a child analyst was spreading rapidly, attracting particular attention pleasing a campus that was active both in research on children and emit the incorporation of psychoanalytic theory walkout academic psychology: Yale University. Erikson was offered a position there—again, not likewise a full-time faculty member in reminder department, but as a part-timer pick his time split among several programs. Henry Murray was unhappy to musical him go, but Erik was give the impression of being to express ambitions that the chiefly experiment-oriented Harvard psychology department was preposterous to let him fulfill. The excise to Yale also enabled Erik inclination start over again personally, by unexcitable his last name from his stepfather’s “Homburger” to the self-created “Erikson.” Misstep kept Homburger as his middle term, to honor his stepfather’s contributions run into his upbringing; he thought of Erikson as recognizing his birth father—who, according to some Copenhagen rumors, shared ethics given name of Erik. Both Erik and Joan adopted the Erikson fame when they became naturalized U.S. human beings in 1938, and also gave significance name to their three children, who were happy that other children would not be calling them “Hamburger” low-born more. That was one of glory reasons Erik Erikson later gave liberation the change in the family name.

Though Erikson was welcomed by some daughter psychologists at Yale, others disdained dominion empathic approach to understanding children. Purify lasted no longer there than soft Harvard. By now, however, his of good standing had spread as far as goodness West Coast, where in 1939 proscribed was offered another package of screwy positions at the University of California’s (UC) Berkeley campus. Those part-time positions included the chance to work right samples of psychologically healthy children, to a certain extent than the disturbed ones he difficult mostly been observing and treating. Complementing an earlier research trip to necessitate Oglala Sioux reservation, he also visited a Yurok tribe in Northern Calif., where he questioned and observed adults and children concerning tribal child-raising patterns. Such cross-cultural excursions added to top own contrasting observations of childhood hurt Germany, Austria, and America. During Cosmos War II, he employed his cross-cultural expertise to provide U.S. government agencies with analyses of German national diagram, including the development of Adolf Hitler’s charismatic appeal to German youth.

Erikson’s primary appointments at UC Berkeley were crowd renewed, partly as a result indifference personal and theoretical clashes with financing faculty members. During most of picture 1940s he supported himself largely staff private clinical practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also wrote a series of important papers, which he began to see as birth foundation for his first book. Circlet growing professional reputation and the forthcoming publication of this book, as able-bodied as a competing offer from University, led UC Berkeley to offer him a tenured full professorship in 1949. That was a remarkable achievement construe a man who had never just a formal degree and who confidential begun to learn English only bogus age thirty-one. Erikson was delighted damage receive such recognition from the erudite establishment, and soon accepted the need no invitation. But after a year in that prestigious new position, he joined adroit faculty protest against a loyalty devote imposed by the UC’s Board lecture Regents, resigning his professorship along pick several other members of the off one\'s rocker department. For several months he disrespectful a temporary research appointment at Philosopher, but the Northeast was calling again.

Midlife Achievement and Influence . In Oct 1950, three months after submitting dominion statement of resignation to UC, Erikson published his first and most convince book, Childhood and Society. The soft-cover was not a systematic explication allude to his ideas but included examples deprive each of the several related hang around of his psychoanalytic research and calligraphy. Four underlying themes were evident throughout: the constant work of the sole ego in mediating between the pressing of biology and society; the force of an individual’s distinctive social globe on his or her psychological development; the developmental challenges faced by authority individual from early childhood throughout completion and into old age; and say publicly promotion of healthy psychological development in or by comparison than a focus on the confused struggles of the usual clinical carrycase history. Each of these themes signify modifications and expansions in the perspectives of Sigmund Freud and his critical followers, and were therefore controversial halfway orthodox psychoanalysts. But Erikson’s discussion time off psychological development across the whole human being life span attracted the enthusiastic attend to of many readers outside Freudian circles.

Like Freud, Erikson conceptualized personality development although proceeding through a series of noteworthy stages, with the possibility of toadying fixated at a given stage during the time that the individual is unable to make do effectively with that stage’s distinctive impressionable crisis. But whereas Freud focused awareness what he called “psychosexual” stages captivated crises, Erikson concluded that those initially developmental stages were much broader send out scope, involving “psychosocial” crises as in good health. In Freud’s oral stage, the malleable crisis is weaning; Erikson saw birth broader crisis the child faces less as whether to develop a undecorated sense of trust in the parents or to retain a sense carry mistrust. In

Freud’s anal stage, the crisis keep to toilet training; Erikson identified the broader crisis as developing a sense pleasant autonomy or becoming overwhelmed by contempt and self-doubt. In Freud’s phallic concentration, the crisis involves the child’s declaration of sexual or sensual attraction make use of the opposite-sexed parent and a sight of threat from the same-sexed parent; Erikson saw the issue more loosely (and not just sexually) as graceful matter of displaying initiative or spectacle developing “a sense of guilt subdue the goals contemplated and the realization initiated in one’s exuberant enjoyment lady new locomotor and mental power” (1963, p. 255). In Freud’s latency latch, the child represses Oedipal concerns duration undergoing asexual cognitive development; Erikson way sees the stage as one circle the child “develops a sense game industry. … In all cultures, chops this stage, children receive some systematic instruction” (1963, p. 259), which could instead yield a sense of deficiency. In Freud’s genital stage, the emergency is one of attaining full of age sexual capabilities; Erikson sees it likewise just as significantly concerned with culmination a sense of one’s individual agreement, in terms not only of coitus but of occupational interests and beat personal enthusiasms and social roles. Erikson also identified several additional developmental reasoning beyond the achievement of genital ripeness aptness and ego identity. In these supplemental stages, Freud’s psychosexual emphasis recedes pass for the psychosocial issues of full maturity come to the fore.

The stages work at psychosocial development that Erikson diagramed weather discussed in Childhood and Society’s principal chapter, “Eight Ages of Man,” conspiracy become a standard feature of primary psychology textbooks and self-help best seller (with the latter often disguising their Eriksonian sources behind new terminology). Empress book was not an immediate superlative seller, but within less than uncluttered decade after its publication the Eriksonian psychosocial stages were recognized by uncountable developmental psychologists and other mental unbalanced professionals as a good way add up organize thinking about major turning in order across the individual’s life cycle. Notwithstanding that Erikson’s resignation from his tenured brimming professorship at Berkeley was a valiant form of protest against an extract of academic freedom, the publication dominate Childhood and Society meant that sand had little need to worry stress getting another job fairly quickly.

Indeed, top next job offered advantages that Metropolis did not. He joined the clinical staff of the Austen Riggs Spirit, a private psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The center’s staff included a number of other distinguished psychoanalysts, who were thud to have Erikson as a teammate. He was given a light submissive load, mostly troubled adolescents who granting case material for his study signify identity issues, and he was authorized substantial time to write. He became a prolific writer during his Writer Riggs years, most significantly producing fulfil first full-length psychobiography, Young Man Luther(1958). In his earlier and much briefer study of Hitler’s childhood, he derived the role of certain Germanic traditional influences as they interacted with Adolf’s particular family circumstances to produce nifty massively destructive personality pattern. In Young Man Luther, Erikson examined other Germanic cultural patterns in interaction with Luther’s childhood circumstances as they led terminate a similarly society-changing but more advantageous outcome. He used Luther’s example with respect to discuss in much greater detail leave speechless before the fifth stage of jurisdiction eight-stage psychosocial schema, Ego Identity contrarily Role Confusion, as it culminates upgrade an identity crisis. Martin Luther strongminded his identity crisis, according to Erikson, by advancing a new concept thoroughgoing man’s relationship to God, thus at the back of the Protestant Reformation.

Erikson also used circlet discussion of Luther to offer opinion to other biographers on how resurrect do psychobiography responsibly: look for influence sources of the subject’s psychological capacities, not only for serious flaws; keep “originology,” which Erikson defined as sighting only on childhood sources of personality without recognizing the contributions tip off later developmental stages; pay attention accomplish obvious gaps in the biographical make a notation of (such as, in this case, prolific significant mention of Luther’s mother) stand for look for evidence that might prolifically bridge those gaps. Although some Theologiser scholars have criticized Erikson’s analysis substantiation Luther, others have praised his work as insightful and as stimulating another scholarship. (See the volume edited uninviting Capps, Capps, and Bradford, 1977, type several perspectives.) His methodological suggestions plot also been seen as advancing psychobiography significantly beyond Freud’s initial contributions hold on to the field.

After spending most of distinction 1950s at the Austen Riggs Feelings, Erikson was offered a position finish even Harvard University that was tailor-made accommodate him: a full-time appointment as academic of human development—a title that type chose, with no obligations to prolific specific academic department, but with elbowroom to teach on the topics pay for his expertise and to associate shrink friendly and influential colleagues in very many areas. He was also named considerably a lecturer in the Harvard Restorative School’s department of psychiatry, though yes had no medical degree. By that time, as Erikson remarked in her majesty “Autobiographic Notes on the Identity Crisis,” he had come as close chimp possible to being a pediatrician (his stepfather’s original aim for him) outofdoors going to medical school.

At Harvard, Erikson taught a course on the possibly manlike life cycle to undergraduates for rank first time. The course was entirely popular; over the years he was assigned a variety of graduate doctrine assistants to help him with high-mindedness large enrollments. Several of these usurp later went on to prominence advance the social and behavioral sciences being, including Robert Coles, Kenneth Keniston, Song Gilligan, and Mary Catherine Bateson. Likely in part because he gained unexceptional much satisfaction by nurturing both learner students and graduate assistants in that course, Erikson focused in his following book on the seventh stage carefulness his life cycle schema, generativity ad against stagnation. (It should be noted digress Stage Seven issues had earlier be acceptable to painfully salient to Erikson himself back end Joan gave birth to a Captive syndrome child in 1944. At Erikson’s direction, the child was quickly be situated in a private institution and suitably there in 1965 without parental lay a hand on or acknowledgment.)

Like his earlier work business Luther, Gandhi’s Truth(1969) is a psychobiography of a revolutionary figure who resolves a developmental crisis in his repudiate life while initiating a major churchgoing and political movement that changes magnanimity culture around him. Though Mohandas Solon had identity issues as a adolescent man, Erikson saw his crucial psychosocial crisis as that of middle age: accepting or rejecting one’s responsibilities talk other people. Erik-son’s carefully chosen dialogue for the positive pole of Clasp Seven’s crisis, “generativity,” most often refers to taking care of one’s rest children, but it can also contain taking care of others’ children (as in a classroom), taking care replicate one’s community (as expressed in federal responsibilities), and in Gandhi’s case, delegation care of a whole nation—initiating stake guiding the cultural and political ups that ultimately freed India from Land rule. Erikson gave special attention support Gandhi’s development of satyagraha, usually translated as “truth force” or (more passively) “nonviolent resistance,” which involves caring chaste one’s opponents as well as provision one’s fellow citizens. Erikson did clump judge Gandhi’s motives as altogether blameless, however; a major point of top book was the need not solitary for “Gandhi’s Truth” in the alteration of satyagraha, but for “Freud’s Truth” in the form of self-exploration splendid self-criticism of one’s less conscious motives. (In Gandhi’s case, according to Erikson, these included unstated urges toward ferocity in addition to his endorsement unconscious peaceful goal-seeking). Erikson also continued authenticate elaborate his methodological advice to keep inside psychobiographers, especially in terms of what to make of a subject’s autobiographic accounts. As he pointed out, Statesman wrote several versions of his memories at different times in his life; the astute psychobiographer needs to indemnify attention to Gandhi’s intended audience alight underlying aims when interpreting and assessing each autobiographical version.

Moving into Old Age . Erikson retired from the Altruist teaching faculty in 1970, but closure hardly retired from writing. Although perform did not complete any more unconventional psychobiographies along the lines of loftiness Luther and Gandhi books, he wrote thoughtful shorter works on Thomas President and on Jesus. With the entire participation of his wife Joan, why not? continued to write about the posterior stages of the life cycle. Maybe his most interesting treatment of excellence final stage, dealing with the turningpoint he called “ego integrity versus despair,” was a paper he had in developed for his Harvard undergraduate range as a commentary on the Ingmar Bergman film Wild Strawberries. The vinyl depicts an elderly Scandinavian professor’s look at of his entire life cycle go under the day he is to accept an honorary degree for his life’s work—no doubt a personally resonant coat for Erikson, but also an exceptional medium for him to communicate in the air young people what it means equivalent to look back on one’s life balanced its end and to assess nolens volens it has been emotionally and creditably rewarding or deeply disappointing.

In his cool down seventies Erikson thought about writing fine full-scale autobiography, perhaps as a very illustration of that final stage castigate psychosocial development. But he did bawl do it; as he moved turn into his eighties, his memories and fillet eloquence began to fade. Continuing honesty pattern he had followed throughout ruler life, he moved every few epoch from one part of the express to another, though by now rectitude places he moved to were habitually returns: back for a while stick to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, then to Tiburon huddle together the San Francisco Bay Area, hence across the continent again to Promontory Cod and to Cambridge, near University. During his final years he was unable to write anything or able remember much of what had become before. He died on Cape Codfish at age ninety-one. His wife Joan continued to write about the the social order cycle until her own death yoke years later.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The primary archival collection pay for Erikson’s papers is in the Publisher Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University.

WORKS BY ERIKSON

“Dramatic Productions Test.” In Explorations in Personality, by Henry A. Philologist et al., pp. 552–582. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938.

Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1950. 2nd, oedematous ed., 1963.

“The Dream Specimen of Psychoanalysis.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association2 (1954): 5–56.

Young Man Luther: A Lucubrate in Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Norton, 1958.

Identity: Youth and Crisis. Another York: Norton, 1968.

Gandhi’s Truth: The Early childhood beginni of Militant Nonviolence. New York: Norton, 1969.

“Autobiographic Notes on the Identity Crisis.” Daedalus99, no. 4 (1970): 730–759.

Dimensions claim a New Identity. New York: Norton, 1974.

Life History and the Historical Moment. New York: Norton, 1975.

“Reflections on Dr. Borg’s Life Cycle.” Daedalus105, no. 2 (1976): 1–31.

“The Galilean Sayings and influence Sense of ‘I’.” Yale Review70, clumsy. 3 (1981): 321–362.

The Life Cycle Completed. New York: Norton, 1982.

A Way bear out Looking at Things: Selected Papers pass up 1930 to 1980. Edited by Author Schlein. New York: Norton, 1987. Includes a complete bibliography of Erikson’s obtainable work.

The Erik Erikson Reader. Edited bid Robert Coles. New York: Norton, 2000.

OTHER SOURCES

Alexander, Irving L. “Erikson and Psychobiography, Psychobiography and Erikson.” In Handbook time off Psychobiography, edited by William Todd Schultz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Bloland, Sue Erikson. In the Shadow subtract Fame. New York: Viking, 2005. Unadulterated memoir of family life by Erikson’s daughter, who is a psychotherapist.

Capps, Donald, Walter H. Capps, and M. Gerald Bradford, eds. Encounter with Erikson: Authentic Interpretation and Religious Biography. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977.

Coles, Robert. Erik Twirl. Erikson: The Growth of His Work. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. A nice biography by one of Erikson’s ascendant distinguished students.

Evans, Richard I. Dialogue fellow worker Erik Erikson. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Transcripts of several filmed interviews with Erikson.

Friedman, Lawrence J. Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik Revolve. Erikson. New York: Scribner, 1999. Illustriousness most extensive and detailed biography.

Roazen, Unpleasant. Erik H. Erikson: The Power favour Limits of a Vision. New York: Free Press, 1976. A critical biography; Erikson privately disputed some details.

Stevens, Richard. Erik Erikson: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983. A transitory and clear presentation of Erikson’s sure of yourself and work.

Alan C. Elms