People

Erik Erikson 1902-1994 - Germany, United States

He was an artist and a teacher in the late 1920's when he met Anna Freud, and began to study child psychoanalyses from her and at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. He immigrated to the United States in 1933. He obtained a position at the Harvard Medical School, and later on, held positions at institutions including Yale, Berkeley, the Menninger Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, and the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.

His special interest in the influence of society and culture on child development had led him to study groups of American Indian children. He was also concerned with the effects the rapid social changes in American on generation gap, racial tensions, juvenile delinquency, changing sexual roles, and the dangers of nuclear war. He is credited for widening the scope of psychoanalytic theory to take greater account of social, cultural, and other environmental factors. from about.com

Encyclopedia Entries

Questions of 

• 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development
• Identity Crisis
• psychosocial development  
• identity

 

Reading

(1958). Young Man Luther. New York: Norton.

(1964). Insight and Responsibility. New York: Norton.

(1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton.

(1974). Dimensions of a New Identity. New York: Norton.

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

Erikson, E. H. & Erikson, J. M. (1987). The Life Cycle Completed. W.W. Norton & Co.

(1996). Dialogue With Erik Erikson. Richard I. Evans (Ed.), Jason Aronson.

Writing available on the net

Commentaries

• Friedman, L. J. (1999). Identity's Architect; A Biography of Erik H. Erikson. Scribner Book Co.
• Coles, R. (1970). Erik H. Erikson: The Growth of His Work. Boston: Little, Brown.

Quotations

"Human personality in principle develops according to steps predetermined in the growing person's readiness to be driven toward, to be aware of and to interact with a widening social radius."