0.11 Erik erikson  (Page 6/26)

Special Biographical Note: While preparing his biography on Erikson, Lawrence Friedman tried his best to identify Erikson’s father. He went to Copenhagen to review historical documents and interview relatives, particularly in the Abrahamsen family. There was a persistent rumor that Erik Erikson had been named after his real father, who had been a court photographer. According to historical records of the appropriate time period, there were two court photographers in Copenhagen named Erik: Erik Strom and Erik Bahnsen. However, little evidence supports that either of these men could have been Erikson’s father. Thus, Friedman concluded that this mystery will never be solved (Friedman, 1999).

Discussion Question: Erikson never knew who his father was, so he never knew his heritage (at least on one side of his family). What do you know of your heritage? In what way, if any, has it influenced your personal development?

Placing Erikson in Context: Psychodynamic Challenges Across the Lifespan

Erik Erikson is well-known and popular, and he was highly respected by most of his colleagues. He knew Sigmund Freud personally, and he was trained in psychoanalysis by Anna Freud. And yet, it is difficult to place Erikson in context. He believed that he had remained true to Freud’s theories, but his shift from psychosexual stages to psychosocial crises, and his extension of them throughout the lifespan, was something that Anna Freud found objectionable, and she dismissed his work as “not much… designed to make my father’s work palatable to Harvard freshman” (cited in Bloland, 2005). Erikson was always bothered by this rejection, even when the importance of his place in psychoanalytic theory was assured by others.

Erikson also stands apart from most other theorists with his emphasis on the continuation of psychodynamic processes throughout the lifespan. Although Jung had discussed the importance of middle age, his theorizing was based on Eastern perspectives, not on psychodynamic theory. A number of other analysts emphasized sociocultural factors in adulthood, including Adler and Horney, but only Erikson proposed a continuous, single theory from birth to old age, a theory based on traditional psychodynamic perspectives.

Erikson was not unique in his emphasis on cross-cultural studies, but other theorists typically looked to confirm their psychodynamic theory after the fact. Erikson’s studies on the childhood of the Sioux and the Yurok helped him form his psychosocial theory, since those studies were part of his experience during the time his theory was forming in his mind.

And finally, Erikson was one of the few theorists who addressed personality changes in old age. As life expectancy continues to rise in America, there are many more elderly people today than ever before. And they are healthier at older ages as well. Thus, our understanding of the unique aspects of the elderly person will become increasingly more relevant, not only to psychology, but to all of society as well.