“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
Erik Homburger Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist who was known for his theory of the social development of humans. He also has a son, Kai T. Erikson, who is an American sociologist.
Erik Erikson was born June 15th, 1902 in Frankfurt, Germany, to a young, Jewish mother named Karla Abrahamsen and a Danish father who abandoned them before he was born. His mother later married a physician named Theodor Homberger.
Erikson is famous for the phrase “identity crisis”. His interest in identity developed early on due to his experiences at school. He was teased for being Nordic because of his height and blue eyes and blonde hair. He was later rejected because of his Jewish background.
Erikson spent some time traveling through Europe then studied pshychoanalysis with Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud. He earned a certificate from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Erikson moved to the U.S. in 1933 and became a teacher at the Harvard Medical School.
He also had his own private practice in child psychoanalysis and published a number of books on his theories. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a national Book Award for his book Ghandi’s Truth.
Erikson spent some of his time studying the culture of the Sioux in South Dakota and the Yurok in northern California. He used this knowledge to further develop his psychoanalytic theory. Erikson also contributed to our understanding of the personality as it develops and is shaped over the course of the lifespan.
Theories of Development and the Ego
Erikson postulated eight stages of development, which was 3 more than what Sigmund Freud had done with his psychosexual stages. Erikson basically expanded on what Freud had theorized. Erikson believed that every human being goes through a certain number of stages to reach full development from birth until death. He also was one of the originators of the Ego psychology. He believed that the environment in which a child lives is crucial to the growth, adjustment, source of self awareness, and identity of a child.
Some of Eriksons’s publications:
Childhood and Society 1950
Young Man Luther 1958
Youth: Change and Challenge 1963
Insight and Responsibility 1964
Identity: Youth and Crisis 1968
Erik Erikson retired from teaching at Harvard in 1970 but continued to write, research, and lecture. He passed away peacefully in his sleep in Herwich, MA in 1994 at the age of 91.
