Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson (1902-1994), American psychoanalyst, who made major contributions to the field of psychology with his work on child development and on the identity crisis.

Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He was an artist and teacher in the late 1920s when he met the Austrian psychoanalyst Anna Freud. With her encouragement, he began studying at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute, where he specialized in child psychoanalysis. In 1933 he immigrated to the United States, first joining the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and then moving to Yale University. During this period Erikson became interested in the influence of culture and society on child development. He studied groups of Native American children to help formulate his theories. These studies enabled him to correlate personality growth with parental and societal values. His first book, Childhood and Society (1950), became a classic in the field. As he continued his clinical work with young people, Erikson developed the concept of the “identity crisis,” an inevitable conflict that accompanies the growth of a sense of identity in late adolescence. Among his other books are Young Man Luther (1958); Insight and Responsibility (1964); Identity (1968); Gandhi's Truth (1969), which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award; and Vital Involvement in Old Age (1986).