Erik Erikson

Personal Identity Crises

It is not surprising that the theorist who gave use the concept of
the identity crisis experienced several such crises of his own.
Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany. His Danish mother, who
was from a wealthy Jewish family, has married several years earlier but
her husband disappeared within hours of the wedding. She became
pregnant by another man, whose name she never revealed, and was
sent by her family to Germany to give birth in order to avoid the social
disgrace of a child out of wedlock. She remained in Germany after the
baby was born and married Dr. Theodore Homburger, the infants
pediatrician. Erik did not know for some years that Dr. Homburger was
not his biological father, and claimed that he grew up unsure of his
name and psychological identity.
Despite his Danish parentage he considered himself German, but
his German classmates rejected him because his mother and
stepfather were Jewish. How Jewish peers rejected him because he was
tall and blond and had Nordic facial features.
In school, Erikson earned mediocre grades. He showed some
talent for art, however, and after graduating from high school he used
that ability to try to establish his identity. Erikson studied at two art
schools and even had his work exhibited at a gallery in Munich, but ach
time he left formal training to resume his wandering, his search for an
identity. Later, discussing his proposed concept of the identity crisis
No doubt, my best friends will insist that I needed to name this
crisis and to see it in everybody else in order to really come to terms
with it in myself Erikson, 1975
As with many of the personality theorists described in this textbook, we
can find a correspondence between Eriksons life experiences,
particularly in childhood and adolescence, and the personality theory
thy developed as an adult.
What Erikson saw and felt happening to himself became the
research that enabled a flow of ideas, articles, books Friedman,
1999

Child Development Studies

At the age of 25, Erikson received an offer to teach at a small
school in Vienna established for the children of Sigmund Freuds
patients and friends. Erikson later confessed that he was drawn to
Freud in part because of his search for a father. It was then that
Eriksons professional career began and that he felt he has finally
found an identity.
He trained in psychoanalysis and was analyzed by Anna Freud.
The analytic sessions were held most daily for 3 years. Anna Freuds
interest was the psychoanalysis of children. Her influence, plus
Eriksons own teaching experiences, made him aware of the
importance of social influences on personality and led him to focus on
child development.
Family and Relationship
In 1929, Erikson met Joan Serson in a masked ball. They fell in
love, but when she became pregnant, Erikson refused to marry her. He
explained that he was afraid to make a permanent commitment and he
believed that his mother and stepfather would disapprove of a
daughter-in-law who was not Jewish. Only the intercession of friends
persuaded him that if he did not marry Joan, he would be repeating the
behavior pattern of the man who had fathered him and condemning
his child to the stigma of illegitimacy, which Erikson himself had felt so
keenly.
Joan abandoned her career interests to become Eriksons lifelong
intellectual partner and editor. She provide a stable social and
emotional foundation for his life and helped him develop his approach
to personality.
He would have been nothing without Joan Friedman, 1999
Work and accomplishments
In 1933, recognizing the growing Nazi menace, the Eriksons
immigrated to Denmark and then to the United States, settling in
Boston. Erikson established a private psychoanalytic practice
specializing in the treatment of children.
He became affiliated with Henry Murrays Harvard Clinic
serving on the Diagnostic Council. He also joined a guidance center for

emotionally disturbed delinquents and served on the staff of

Massachusetts General Hospital.
Erikson began graduate work at Harvard, intending to obtain a Ph.D. in
psychology, but he failed his first course and decided that a formal
academic program was unsatisfying.
In 1936, he was invited to the Institute of Human Relations at Yale
University, where he taught in the medical school and continued his
psychoanalytic work with children.
Erikson continued to expand on his ideas at the Institute of Human
Development of the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1950, Erikson joined the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge,
Massachusetts which was a treatment facility for emotionally disturbed
adolescents.
Ten years later he returned to Harvard to teach a graduate seminar
and a popular undergraduate course on the human life cycle, retiring
in 1970.
At the age of 84, Erikson published a book about old age.
Nevertheless, toward the end of a lifetime of accomplishments, honors,
and accolades, he felt, according to his daughter, disappointed with
what he had achieved.
It was still a source of shame to this celebrated man that he had
been an illegitimate child Bloland, 2005