Erik H. Erikson

Explorer of Identity and the Life Cycle

Richard Stevens

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781349877997
• eBook ISBN: 9781350312692
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Erik Erikson has been described as 'probably the most significant post-Freudian thinker' with a 'unique and profound vision'. Al Gore was his student, Bill Clinton a great admirer. Getting to grips with his complex ideas however is no easy task. This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth road map to Erikson's work and is ideal for all students of Psychology. Stevens lucidly and authoritatively analyses his ideas about childhood development, adolescence, identity, the life cycle and his psychobiographical studies of Luther and Gandhi. This penetrating critique of Erikson's work reveals how relevant his ideas are today.

1Introducing Erik H. Erikson

Many years ago, when I was a young lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, my then Head of Department asked me to review a book for a staff and postgraduate seminar group. The book was Childhood and Society. It was my first introduction to the writings of Erik Erikson. I have to confess that there were moments in my initial reading of the first chapters when I put the book down to reflect on whether this was just a lot of awkward verbiage. Or were there hidden in the words ideas that illuminated our understanding of human behaviour? I persevered and, as I progressed further into this rich and complex book, I began to appreciate the wisdom and insights into the human condition which reading Erikson offers.

Though the response to his work by other analysts has sometimes been muted, many are in no doubt about his importance. Elizabeth Mayer describes him as ‘one of the most extraordinary psychoanalysts our field has seen’.¹ Seligman and Shanok write of ‘Erikson’s unique and profound vision’.² Roazen accepts that Erikson is acknowledged as one of the foremost psychologist of our time’ and argues that he revitalized the Freudian tradition.³ There is certainly no doubt about the enthusiasm of the general intellectual public. The historian Friedman describes him as ‘a major influence in American intellectual life… perhaps the most significant post-Freudian thinker’.⁴ The poet W.H. Auden commented on a book of Erikson’s that it was ‘so full of wise observations about human life that no quotations could it justice’.⁵ Statesmen also acknowledged him – Al Gore was one of Erikson’s students and Bill Clinton an admirer.

If I open this book with such laudatory references, it is to demonstrate that I am not the only one to find great value in Erikson’s work. And when we remember that his focus is on people’s personal lives – their development through life, their sense of identity and their relationship with society, his insights into these topics have personal and social relevance today. They make Erikson an ideal subject for this Mindshapers series on thinkers who help to shape our understanding of the human condition. But what Erikson offers is not pat prescriptions or packaged formulae but what in his own words he describes as ‘tools to think with’. As Welchman comments, ‘when faced with some particularly confusing or intractable question, I could often find in returning to Erikson’s writings, if not an answer, at least an insight, a thought-provoking response or a path to follow’.⁶

However, if others value his work as much as I, many also find Erikson’s work not always easily assimilable. Reading Erikson has been described as ‘like walking in a dense and beautiful forest with a thousand paths leading through it’.⁷ In such a situation you require a guide; and that is what this book aims to provide.

Erikson’s writings are diverse – often in the form of essays or collections of essays. They sprawl. It takes time to grasp their essence and the very real understanding they provide. My purpose in this book is to try to capture and communicate that more straightforwardly. So that the reader will by the end have a clear vision of the core ideas in Erikson’s writing and begin to appreciate the deep insights he contributes. He has certainly profoundly influenced my own thinking about psychological issues. If this book can convey, as I hope it does, something of the essence and freshness of Erikson’s approach and, in particular, stimulates the reader to look at Erikson’s own writings (for which this book provides a map), then it will have served its purpose well. Erikson has much to say about both personality and society that is highly relevant in the contemporary world and I will focus on this in the final chapter.

Erikson is important not only for the very considerable influence he has had in disseminating psychoanalytic ideas but also because his work embodies key developments in psychoanalytic thought since Freud. He has roots in both the old world of psychoanalysis and the new. As a young man, he was a frequent visitor to Sigmund Freud’s house. He was analysed by Freud’s daughter Anna and made the acquaintance of several of the original members of the psychoanalytic movement. But in 1933 he joined the many analysts who emigrated from an increasingly tense Europe to seek a new future in the USA. He not only experienced life in a different culture and learned to practise there as an analyst, but he also worked as an academic and researcher, with both anthropologists and psychologists as close colleagues.

With Erich Fromm⁸ and Karen Horney, he is usually described as a neo-Freudian (though he preferred the term ‘post-Freudian’). All three were emigrés and, because of this experience, they were particularly sensitized to the profound effects of the culture in which a person lives. One key thrust of Erikson’s work is to explore the complex relationship between social context and individual development, particularly as this is mediated through styles of child-rearing. Like many other analysts since Freud, Erikson also places greater emphasis on the ego – that part of personality concerned with directing action, coping with the external world and integrating competing urges within the self. His particular focus here has been on the healthy ego – how this develops and how it is maintained. Whereas Freud’s conceptualization of development largely stopped at puberty, Erikson is concerned to trace the evolution of the ego throughout life.

While extending psychoanalytic thought in these ways, Erikson nevertheless remains within the essential spirit of Freud’s approach. His particular strength is to bring psychoanalytic concepts alive. His vivid case analyses show psychoanalysis in action at its best. But, with his interest in conscious experience, the relation between the individual and society, and psychological development not just in childhood but throughout life, there is also a humanistic quality about his work. His concern is with the fundamental human condition – how can we make sense of our lives and best forge the trajectory of our futures? In this respect his writings often seem to carry the potential to increase whatever store of human wisdom the reader may possess.

A sense of coherence and evolution marks the pattern of Erikson’s writings. Ideas planted initially almost as asides come to full flower in books and papers years later. Like a person developing, each stage of his work builds on the previous ones. They unfold from each other and reflect his changing experiences. His approach is characterized by a healthy respect for the richness and complexity of human life. He refuses the temptations to simplify or over-formalize his conceptions. With a few exceptions, these tend to emerge from working analyses, rather than being set out in schematic form. For these reasons, his ideas are not always easy to pin down. People who may have heard of his theories quite often know very little of what they contain. It is the primary purpose of this book to rectify this by presenting his ideas concisely and lucidly in the context of the developing cycle of his work.

Erikson is best known for his conceptions of identity and the life cycle. He emphasizes the importance of the study of identity to our time. Whereas for Freud’s patients the key issue was sexuality and the repressions that social life demanded, for people in the contemporary Western world at least, it becomes the problem of creating who they are and the persons they may become. In his concept of the life cycle Erikson traces ego development from early childhood through maturity to old age by exploring the ego qualities which emerge and are crucial to each stage.

One theme which, though less in evidence, runs throughout his work, is his emphasis on integration. To understand any individual, we need to see him or her both as a biological and social being. Freud realized the significance of this interface – that the human person is at once physical and symbolic, and is caught between the interplay of drives and of meanings. But he failed fully to confront the difficulties – both for method and theory – which this Janus face of humankind gives rise to. Erikson at least tries to deal with it directly. In several case studies, he analyses actions and experiences specifically in terms of the interactions between the biological basis and social context in which each occurs and its significance in the experience and development of the individuals concerned.

Erikson’s background in psychoanalysis alerts him to the constructed nature of any theory or analysis – in other words, that it rests on assumptions which themselves require to be made explicit. In his vivid case studies, particularly his detailed historical portraits of Luther and Gandhi, he does not shy at reflecting on the possible biases which might underlie his own analyses. He draws our attention to the intrinsic limitations of psychobiography and the formidable methodological problems posed by any attempt to encapsulate the life and character of another human being.

Each of these major themes will be dealt with in turn as they emerge in the evolution of Erikson’s thought. While some critical comment will be offered as the book proceeds, the emphasis will be on conveying the essence of his ideas. Substantive evaluation of his overall contribution will be left until the concluding chapter.

As indicated, Erikson’s work often seems to spring from his personal experience. So, to set the scene, the book begins with a brief sketch of the pattern of his life. This will be taken up again in the final chapter where links will be drawn between specific aspects of his life and work.

Erikson’s writings presume acceptance of certain basic psychoanalytic ideas. He takes for granted, for example, the significance of the unconscious and the ways it can influence our dreams, fantasies, actions and what we say. He accepts that the sequence of early experience, particularly in relation to psychosexual development, will play a crucial role in determining later personality. Reading this account of Erikson’s work, nevertheless, should demand no more of the reader than the very basic familiarity with psychoanalysis that is part of the common currency of our culture. Should you feel the need though for a substantial and readable grounding in the psychoanalytic tradition from which Erikson emerged, you might like to look at another title in the Mindshapers series – Sigmund Freud: Examining the Essence of his Contribution.⁹

Erik H. Erikson © Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS

2A Brief Biography

Perhaps not surprisingly for the man for whom identity would become the core issue, the origins of Erikson’s own sense of self were complex. His very attractive mother Karla Abrahamsen was Danish and from a comfortably-off, middle class, Jewish family. She had parted with her first husband on their honeymoon in Rome. He vanished abroad and she never saw him again. When Karla became pregnant a few years later, she was sent to live with some aunts in Germany where in 1902 Erik was born. For appearance’s sake, her absent husband was declared to be his father, although they had parted long before Erik could have been conceived. Erikson was never to know who his biological father was. His mother would never tell him and this subsequently became the source of some friction between them. All that Erikson could discover later from other relatives was that his father was probably Danish, gentile and possibly an artist. He fantasized that he might have been a Danish aristocrat and that he had been named after him.

For the first three years of his life, Erik had no competitor for his mother’s affections. Then, after her first husband had been declared dead, Karla remarried. Her second husband was a Jewish paediatrician from Karlsruhe, the German town in which they lived. The newly-weds took little Erik on their honeymoon boat trip to Copenhagen. As his new stepfather wanted to be accepted as Erik’s real father, the boy’s surname was changed from Salomonsen (the name of his mother’s first husband) to his own – Homburger. Erikson reported later that he was old enough to sense this ‘loving deceit’ and, while his new father was caring enough, he felt this might have served to undermine yet further a firm sense of his own identity. As he grew older, further issues arose. Because he was tall, blonde and blue-eyed, he stood out at the synagogue as different. At the local school, the converse applied, he was different because he was known to be Jewish. While accepting the German nationality of his birth, he maintained strong links with his mother’s family in Denmark through frequent visits. Thus he felt both Jew and Gentile, German and Danish and yet not fully identified with any of these. While being brought up in a strictly practising Jewish family, he distanced himself from such orthodoxy. As an adolescent, he became fascinated with Christianity, which he encountered through the family of friends. He was particularly close to a schoolmate who graduated in his year (and who was to figure significantly in his life) – Peter Blos. Peter’s father Edwin introduced Erik not only to Goethe’s ideas, but also to Gorky and Gandhi, both of whom were to figure prominently in his later writings.

At school, Erik’s primary interests had been in history, languages and art and he went on to enter the local art school. In 1922 he moved to Munich where he studied art for a further two years. This was interspersed with taking time out – walking in the Black Forest and staying near Lake Constance, sketching and writing his thoughts and reflections. He then moved on to Italy, settling for a time in Florence. These wanderings, made possible by his mother’s support, he later ascribed to his own prolonged search for a coherent identity.

Eventually, at the age of 25, he arrived in Vienna where Peter Blos had invited him to help run a small school whose aim was to develop new and creative teaching methods. This marked the beginning of the most significant period in his life. He immediately took to teaching. Although some of his students commented later on his awkward, slightly anxious manner, he connected intuitively with them and enjoyed the close emotional connections with children which the experimental Hietzing school allowed. Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna had begun to practice analysis with children and many of the pupils in the school were her patients or had parents who were either being analysed or were psychoanalysts themselves. Erikson was drawn into their circle and eventually underwent a training analysis with Anna Freud. As part of his training, h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Personal Acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing Erik H. Erikson
• 2. A Brief Biography
• 3. Triple Book-keeping
• 4. The Life Cycle
• 5. Psychosocial Identity
• 6. Psychobiographical Studies
• 7. The Nature of Erikson’s Contribution
• Appendix
• References and Notes
• Index