Person attributes
Erik Homburger Erikson (Erik Homburger Erikson; June 15, 1902, Frankfurt am Main - May 12, 1994, Harwich, Massachusetts) was a developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is known primarily for his theory of the stages of psychosocial development and as the author of the term "identity crisis." His son, Kai T. Erickson,[en] is a well-known American sociologist.
Erikson's fate is peculiar. He was born as the result of an extramarital affair between his mother, Carla Abrahamsen, of Jewish descent, and a Danish citizen (there is no more detailed information, other than his last name, about Erickson's father). Carla Abrahamsen came from a prominent Jewish family, tracing its lineage back to the northern German states. Her father, Josef, was a dried fruit merchant in Copenhagen, and her brothers Einar, Nikolai, Max and Axel were engaged in charity work (including a kitchen for poor immigrants from Russia, mostly Jews). Her mother, Henriette, died when Karla was 15 years old.
Because Karla was officially married to Waldemar Isidor Salomonsen (a Jewish stockbroker), the child was recorded as Erik Salomonsen. After some time, she trained as a nurse, moved to Karlsruhe, and in 1904 married the pediatrician Theodor Homburger. In 1909 Erik Salomonsen became Erik Homburger, and in 1911 he was formally adopted by his stepfather[8]. Although Carla's husband adhered to Conservative Judaism (not orthodox), she insisted on strict observance of Jewish ritual in the family, including kosher food, holidays, and weekly synagogue visits on Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to secular education, the children received a Jewish education. Moreover, Carla ran a branch of the Baden Jewish Charity League at the local synagogue.
The identity crisis issue had much to do with Erickson's own life experiences. Information about his biological father was withheld from him as a child. He was teased at Jewish religious school for his "Nordic" appearance (he was a tall, blue-eyed blond) and at regular school for his Jewish faith. As the years passed, the suspicion that his father was not of Jewish origin plagued him more and more.
In 1930, he married a Canadian dancer and artist, Joan Mowat Serson, and emigrated from Vienna to the United States in 1933. Somewhat later his sisters emigrated: Ruth Hirsch settled in New York and Ellen Katz in Haifa. In the late 1930s, Eric Homburger officially changed his last name to Erickson (adopting himself, as he explained it), while retaining his former surname as his middle name.
Erikson contrasted Freud's theory, which divided psychological development into five stages, with his own scheme of adaptation, which included eight such stages. Erikson renamed the so-called "genital stage" "adolescence," and added three more stages of adulthood.
Erikson also owned the concept of "ego-psychology," emphasizing the role of the ego as something greater than the "handmaiden of the id" (in the Freudian view). According to Erikson, it is the ego that is responsible for organizing life, for ensuring harmony with the physical and social environment, and for healthy personal growth; it is the source of self-confidence and self-identity. Created the theory of adaptation.
In 1950, he became a victim of the "witch hunt" (McCarthyism) in the United States, as he was suspected of being a communist sympathizer. When UC Berkeley professors were required to sign loyalty oaths, Erickson left the university, after which he worked at a clinic in Massachusetts for 10 years and another 10 years at Harvard.
In 1970, Erickson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his book Gandhi's Truth.
Major works:
- Childhood and Society (1950)
- Young Man Luther. Young Man Luther. A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958)
- Mahatma Gandhi's Truth: On the Origin of Militant Nonviolence (1969)
- Adulthood (editor, 1978)
- Vital Involvement in Old Age (with J. M. Erikson and H. Kivnick, 1986)
- The Life Cycle Completed (with J. M. Erikson, 1987)
Research.
He based his psychology on the postulate of socio-cultural conditioning of the human psyche. He developed the concept of psychosocial identity. In his opinion, an individual's identity ensures the integration of his past, present and future on the one hand, and his inclinations and social roles on the other hand, serving as a basis for comparing himself with others. In addition, identity acts as a major factor in mental health. Under conditions of significant social shifts, this identity can be broken, therefore, special psychotherapeutic measures are necessary for its restoration. He developed a theory of staged development of the personality, which assumes that a child goes through a number of typical developmental stages (Childhood and society. Penguin Books, 1967; in Russian: Childhood and society. SPb.: Lenato, 1996). Thus, the process of personal development occurs from birth to death and passes through eight stages. The specifics of age depend both on the situation and on age. At each stage, a certain task of development is solved, each of which has the purpose of acquiring a certain socially significant quality (trust, autonomy, initiative, etc.). Depending on quality and completeness of the decision (or non-decision) of a certain task of age, there are corresponding personal newformations. 1. Infant stage (till 1 year): basic trust or distrust (the significant group is represented by the mother). 2. Early age (from 1 to 3 years): autonomy or feeling of dependence (adult family members). 3. Playful stage (3 to 6 years old): initiative or guilt (peers). 4. School stage (ages 6 to 12): productive object activities or feelings of inferiority (significant strangers). 5. Adolescent stage (ages 12 to 18): identity or identity diffusion (peers). 6. Adolescence (18 to 25): intimacy and solidarity or isolation (close friends, loved ones). 7. Adulthood (25 to 54): creativity or stagnation (peers or family). 8. Old age (after 54): ego-integration or disillusionment with life (a few people or the whole world).
Representative of the neo-psychoanalytic school of "self psychology
Erikson, Eric (born June 15, 1902, Frankfurt am Main), American psychologist and psychoanalyst, representative of the neo-psychoanalytic school of "psychology of the self". Erikson attempted to rethink a number of the basic tenets of classical psychoanalysis, emphasizing, in contrast to Freud, the adaptive aspect of human mental activity. Erikson put forward a psychosocial theory of the staged formation of "group identity" and, in parallel, "ego identity" (eight stages of personality development, each of which has the goal of achieving a particular socially valuable quality: trust, autonomy, initiative, etc.).
Erikson considers successful solution of age "identity crises" caused by a mismatch between social requirements and the psychosocial maturity of the individual to be the basic principle of development.
Under the influence of cultural anthropologists (R. Benedict, M. Mead and others), Erikson contrasts Freudian stages of psychosexual development with the theory of epigenesis, which uses rich empirical material to show the high degree of dependence of mental activity on a set of sociocultural factors. According to Erikson, the conscious activity of the "I" (Ego) is the basis of human behavioral adaptability; in this connection, the central place is given not to the unconscious "I" (Id), but to the "I" sphere - the processes of thinking, perception, memory and the so-called "I" sphere is interpreted as a relatively autonomous beginning of non-sexual and non-aggressive motivations. Instinctive motivations, according to Erikson, are not primary but are interdependent with conscious processes.
At the core of the adaptive activity of the self, according to Erikson, is some synthetic principle according to which there is a continuous synthesis of experiences. The synthetic activity of the self, in his opinion, is responsible for the formation of holistic mental formations, among which the sense of the so-called psychosocial identity plays a particularly important role. Subjectively, it is experienced as "a sense of identity with oneself and the duration of one's individual existence." The notion of psychosocial identity accentuates the significant influence of the individual's nonchildhood experiences and the creative nature of his or her maturation in the process of role integration in the group, which expresses Erikson's departure from Freudian biological determinism. The search for psychosocial identity has, according to Erikson, an autotherapeutic character. In Young man Luther (1958) and Gandhi's truth (1969), Erikson interpreted the psychic life of great personalities in the spirit of his concept, noting that their personality crises at the "turning points of history" are isomorphic to the social crisis and have the same structure as it. Erikson's conviction of the historical invariance of his theory and its applicability to representatives of different eras has led to criticism from professional historians (Manuel et al.). Erikson's work has influenced Western psychologists, sociologists and historians and is one of the most influential alternatives to orthodox Freudianism.
Collections:
- Identity and the Life Cycle. Selected Papers (1959)
- A Way of Looking at Things: Selected Papers 1930—1980 (Editor: S. P. Schlien, 1995)
- The Erik Erikson Reader (Editor: Robert Coles, 2001)
