Erik Erikson (1902–94,) born Erik Homberger, was a German-born American developmental psychologist and educator. He is celebrated for his influential writings on social development, individual identity, and the interactions of psychology with history, politics, and culture.
Born in Frankfurt am Main to Danish parents, Erikson trained in Vienna under Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, specializing in child analysis. In 1933, Erikson immigrated to the USA, where he engaged in clinical work and taught successively at Yale, Berkeley, and Harvard. His research focused on the cultural and social influences on psychological development.
Erikson’s most well-known book, Childhood and Society (1950,) divides human development into eight stages, each characterized by a psychosocial crisis that the individual must resolve and internalize in preparation for the next developmental stage.
Erikson devised the concept of the adolescent ‘identity crisis,’ and expanded on his theory in books such as Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968.) He wrote “psychobiographies,” tracing the psychological development of historical figures in Young Man Luther (1958) and Gandhi’s Truth on the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969; Pulitzer.)
In the 1970s, Erikson examined modern ethical and political problems, presenting his views in the collection of essays, Life History and the Historical Moment (1975,) which links psychoanalysis to history, political science, philosophy, and theology. His later works include The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (1982) and Vital Involvement in Old Age (1986.)
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Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Accomplishment
Personality, too, is destiny.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Appropriateness, Aptness
The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one’s self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Identity
Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters—where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Happiness
Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Hope
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
—Erik Erikson
Topics: Anxiety, Death, Fear
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