Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (1958)

TOM BUTLER-BOWDON*
[85] If you have ever used the term 'identity crisis' you have psychologist Erik Erikson to
thank for invented the term. Eriksons focus on identity was shaped by his own
background. The product of a brief affair between his married Jewish mother, Karla
Abrahamsen, and an unidentified Danish man, the author grew up in Germany as Erik
Homberger, the surname of his physician stepfather. At school he was teased for being
Jewish, while at the synagogue he was pilloried for his 'Nordic god' appearance: tall, blonde
and blue-eyed. When three half-sisters came along, this only intensified his feeling of being
an outsider. In his late thirties, upon taking up US citizenship, Homberger changed his
surname to 'Erikson', that is, son of himself.

While Erikson paid particular attention to the formation of identity in adolescence, his
great contribution was to note that the question 'Who am I?' will for the average person
raise itself many times over the course of a lifetime. Freud had identified five stages of
psychological development from infancy to the teenage years, but Erikson went further to
cover the whole 'life cycle', with eight 'psychosocial' stages from birth to old age. As one
stage ends, we experience a crisis when our identity comes into question, and at these
points we can choose either growth or stagnation. Each choice, he said, lays another
cornerstone in the structure of the adult personality. In fully appreciating the intensity of
these turning points, Erikson shattered the myth that life after we turn 20 is one long flat
line of stability.

Erikson is famous for another reason. Although Freud had written a celebrated study of
Leonardo da Vinci, it was Erikson's books on Gandhi and Martin Luther that established a
new genre, psychobiography, or the application of psychological analysis to famous
people's lives. In Luther he found an example of identity crisis par excellence.

The Luther story in brief

Though hard to understand now, the Christian Europe of Luther's childhood and
adolescence was preoccupied with the 'Last Judgment', a final accounting of one's life in
which all sins would be balanced against the good. People lived in fear of going to Hell,
and prayed relentlessly for the souls of those who had died. Public torture of criminals was
common, as was caning and whipping of children in school. The theme of life was total
obedience: to one's elders, to the Church, to God.

[86] Into this world-mood of guilt and sadness as Erikson describes it, Martin Luther
was born (1483). His father had come from peasant stock, but through hard work had
become a small capitalist with an ownership stake in a mine. Through great thrift, Hans
Luther had created a nest egg for his son's education. Martin would become a high-ranking

*
Tomado de 50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do. Insight and Inspiration from
50 Key Books, London & Boston, Nicholas Brealey, 2007, pp. 84-89.
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lawyer, thereby vaulting the family out of its humble origins forever. He duly went to Latin
school and did well, and at 17 entered university. In 1505 he graduated and enrolled in law
school. But while at home for the summer break, Martin was almost struck by lightning
during a thunderstorm. Already having misgivings about the life path laid out for him, he
took the event as a sign and vowed to become a monk. His parents were devastated, but in
1501 he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt.

At first, all went well, as he enjoyed the holy atmosphere of the monastery. However,
like any young man he was tempted by sexual thoughts and consumed by guilt. As the
many Luther biographers tell it, he had some kind of panicked fit in the choir of his
monastery church, crying out, 'I am not!' Erickson sees the event as indicating a classic
identity crisis. He had left behind the secular career (not to mention marriage) his father had
so wanted him to follow; yet now, after a promising 'Godly' beginning, the monastery path
now seemed wrong as well, despite his desperate efforts to cling to his vows. He was
caught in a terrible no man's land of identity. Whatever he thought he was, it is painfully
clear he was not.

Yet Martin stayed with the Church, ascending quickly. He became a Doctor of
Theology, and by 1515 was a vicar in charge of eleven monasteries. All the time, though, a
gap was growing between his understanding of genuine spiritual faith and his perception of
the Church. According to medieval Catholic doctrine, sins required some kind of worldly
punishment, which could be alleviated by doing 'good works'. Even this responsibility
could be sidestepped by the purchase of 'indulgences', pieces of paper sold by the Church
that poured money in its coffers. Yet this issue was just the tip of the iceberg for Luther.
Quite radically, he had come to the belief that the authority of the Bible (the 'Word') was far
more important than the authority of an institution.

Things came to a head when, in October 1517, he nailed a document the famous 95
Theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, outlining the areas where the Church had to
reform. The document was a bombshell, but might never have had the impact it did were it
not for the recent invention of the printing press, which enabled this and Luther's later
writings to be spread far and wide. Anyone, from peasant to prince, who had a gripe with
the status quo, now had a focus. Luther became a celebrity, and his rebellion sparked off
the Reformation.

[87] Eriksons interpretation

If Luther became the great rebel who changed the face of religion and the world, what took
him so long? Rebellion is usually manifested in one's younger years, but Luther was 34 by
the time he properly spoke out against the Church. Eriksons explanation is that young
people must first believe in something intensely before they turn against it, and Luther was
desperate to believe in the Church's divine authority. He may never have become the
Church's most vocal critic unless he had first gone through the experience of complete
devotion and attachment. Erikson comments that great figures in history often spend years
in a passive state. From a young age they may feel that they will create a big stamp on the
world, but unconsciously wait for their particular truth to form itself in their minds, until
they can make the most impact at the right time. This was the case with Luther.
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Erikson gives much space to a psychoanalytical discussion of Luther's relationships

with his father. He surmises that Martin's courage in standing up to the Holy Roman
Church can only be understood in the context of his initial disobedience to his father.
Perhaps surprisingly, Erikson suggests Luther was not rebellious by nature (in fact in many
ways he was reactionary), but having once disobeyed the major figure in his life, this put
him on a trajectory of disobedience.

Erikson's most intriguing point is that, yes, Luther changed the world via his
theological position, but that position was the result of the working out of his own personal
demons and identity crises. Was he Luther the good monk, Luther the good son, or Luther
the great reformer?

His need to work through his own neuroses relating to guilt, combined with a deep
feeling for justice, resulted in a deep personal conviction that happened to be writ large on
history. Erikson likens major identity crises to a 'second birth', an idea he got from William
James. While the once-born person 'rather painlessly fit themselves and are fitted into the
ideology of their age', twice-born people are often tortured souls who seek healing in some
total conversion experience that will give them direction. The positive aspect of the twice-
born is that if they do successfully transform themselves, they have the potential to take the
world along with them. It took a while for Luther to work out who he was, but once he had
not even the Pope could stop him.

The importance of time out

Erikson considered it extremely important whether or not a society is able to accommodate

youthful identity crisis. He wrote about the concept of 'moratorium', a period of time or an
experience that a culture deliberately creates so a young person can 'find themselves' before
embarking on proper adulthood. Today, a person may take a 'gap year' between finishing
school and starting college. In Luther's time a period in the monastery gave many young
men an opportunity to decide 'what one is and is going to be'.

What would have happened if Martin had done what his father wanted and entered the
legal profession? He may have done well in a conventional sense, but never fulfilled his
potential.

[88] Erikson remarks that the real crisis in a person's life often comes in their late
twenties, when they realize they are overcommitted to some path they feel is 'not them',
even if they entered it enthusiastically in the first place. Their very success has put them
into a hole that may require all their psychological strength to climb out of.

Eriksons broader point is that if you have a culture in which at certain vital junctures,
people feel pressured to choose stagnation over growth, society at large will suffer. All wise
cultures acknowledge the youthful identity crisis and seek to accommodate it. Though
troublesome in the short term, the new ideas and energies that are unleashed by these
personal turning points can bring rejuvenation, not just to he person experiencing it but to
the wider community.
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Luthers final crisis

Even at the height of his fame and power, Luther was still writing to his father trying to
defend and justify his actions and like his dad, in middle age and later he became
something of a reactionary. The firebrand ended up in middle-class comfort, defending
Germany's system of princely government and urging the peasants to accept their station in
life. In outlook and habits, he remained a 'provincial' rather than a super-worldly figure. He
became just as his father had wanted him to be: influential, well off, married.

You would have thought this would be the happiest time in Luther's life. In fact it ushered
in what Erikson calls the mature adult crisis of 'generativity', in which one asks, has
whatever I have created been worth it? Would I do it all over again, or have I wasted my
years? Luther's first crisis was of pure identity; this one, Erikson notes, was of integrity.
Despite being a 'great man', Luther still had to go through this phase, as every older adult
inevitably does.

Erikson's point is that the issue of identity is never completely solved. When one aspect of
us achieves wholeness, there is still some larger self that is trying to make sense of
experience. Luther's life might be characterized as a succession of statements to himself of
'what he is not'. That, in a way, is the easy half of identity formation. We are still left with
the task of deciding what we are.

Final word

How a person changes their conception of themselves over a lifetime is one of the most
intriguing questions in psychology, because identity who or what we know ourselves to
be, or at least hope we are - is so fundamental.

There is a tendency to belittle someone going through an identity crisis, to emphasize

the 'normality' of it. Yet Erikson's observation of Luther could be said of all of us in the
same position: He acts as if mankind were starting all over with his own beginning as an
individual...To him, history ends as well as [89] starts with him... This may sound like the
self-absorption of the adolescent, yet at all ages a person must come to some kind of
resolution about where they stand in relation to the world. Unless society does what it can
to assist successful passage through the major life turning points, not only will the cost be
mental illness, but also the loss of potential.

The obvious danger of psychobiography is that you can read too much into a person's
childhood and its effect on later life. However, the connection that Erikson makes between
a severe childhood and domineering father on the one hand, and the tenor of the times in
which Luther lived, is convincing. He shows that Luther's personal crises could not be
separated from the social changes happening around him, and that the whole Reformation
could be seen as Luther's personal issues getting worked out on a global scale. It was his
own conscience, for instance, that drove him to reposition the Church as secondary to a
person's direct relationship with God. And as a true believer, Luther's insistence on faith
above 'good works' also reshaped Christendom.
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Psychology matters, Erikson was trying to say, because history is essentially the acting out
of individual psychologies.

En: <http://www.butler-bowdon.com/erik-erikson---young-man-luther.html>

Consultado el 18/08/17