Week 11: Erik Erikson Theory

Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany. His biological father abandoned the family before Erik was born. During his childhood, and his early adulthood, he was Erik Homberger, (named after his pediatrician/step-father)  and his parents kept the details of his birth a secret. So here he was, a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy who was also Jewish. At temple school, the kids teased him for being Nordic; at grammar school, they teased him for being Jewish.

After graduating high school, Erik focused on becoming an artist, wandering totally carefree around Europe with a friend, struggling with the question “who am I?”. He eventually began teaching art at a school run by a friend of Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud’s daughter), he gathered a certificate in Montessori education and one from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He was psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud herself, and studied Freud’s work carefully.  While Freud believed in “destiny”, Erikson believed that a child’s “environment” had a great influence on their development.


With the advent of World War II he immigrated to the United States.  He later taught at Yale, and later still at the University of California at Berkeley. It was during this period of time that he did his famous studies of modern life among the Lakota and the Yurok.

When he became an American citizen, he officially changed his name to Erik Erikson. No-one seems to know where he got the name! Erikson was known and praised for his theories on pyscho-social development, personality, and identity crisis.

8 Stage Theory of Psycho-social Development

Erik Erikson refined the work of Sigmund Freud, creating the 8 stage theory of psycho-social development. This theory is widely accepted as “fact” in the psychology community today.  The first 6 stages deal with the developing child and young adult.  Freud outlined the stages of his theory in a manner imitating “developmental tasks”.  In other words, every human being, in order to successfully deal with life in society, will pass through each stage…preferably in order and preferably during a specific timeframe.  If an individual does not “accomplish the task” in one of the 8 stages, difficulties emotionally and socially will undoubtedly show up later in life.

 

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