Erik Erikson
German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst
German-born American psychoanalyst known for the eight stages of psychosocial development, the phrase identity crisis, and the 1950 book Childhood and Society.
Why this person matters
Erikson extended psychoanalytic ideas across the whole lifespan, pairing each stage with a crisis and a virtue. Anna Freud trained him as a child analyst in Vienna. His fieldwork with the Sioux and the Yurok let him compare childhood in different cultures.
Main contributions
Eight stages of psychosocial development
The stages run from trust versus mistrust in infancy to ego integrity versus despair in late adulthood. Each centres on a crisis, and resolving it produces a virtue. The first five parallel Freud's stages and three adult stages were added.
Identity crisis
He coined the phrase identity crisis and argued that identity formation reaches a crisis in adolescence, shaped by social and environmental factors.
Cross-cultural fieldwork
He studied the Sioux in South Dakota in 1938 and later made a field trip to northern California with the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber to study the Yurok. Childhood and Society (1950) was the first account of his theory.
Context and limits
Erikson never completed a university degree yet held posts at Harvard, Yale and Berkeley. He took his stepfather's surname, Homburger, and later adopted Erikson. The sources read do not assess the empirical support for his stage sequence or report critiques of it, so this profile states none.
In your introductory course
Lifespan development.His eight stages appear in lifespan development chapters and in discussions of adolescence and identity.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 9.2. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1936
He joined the staff at Yale, where he stayed to 1939.
- 1938
He did fieldwork with the Sioux in South Dakota.
- 1950
He published Childhood and Society and left the University of California because California's Levering Act required professors to sign loyalty oaths.
- 1960
He returned to Harvard as professor of human development, retiring in 1970.
Sources
- Harvard Gazette, Erik EriksonUniversity. Institutional biography inspected.
- New World Encyclopedia, Erik H. EriksonReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Erik EriksonReference work. Reference article inspected.