Erik H. Erikson

Erik Erikson.

Erik Homburger Erikson (born June 15, 1902 near Frankfurt am Main ; † May 12, 1994 in Harwich , Massachusetts , USA) was a German - American psychoanalyst and representative of psychoanalytic ego psychology . He became known in particular through the step model of psychosocial development he developed together with his wife .

life and work

childhood

Erikson's mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came from Copenhagen and grew up in a well-off Jewish family. Her husband, the stockbroker Valdemar Salomonsen, left her shortly after the wedding, and Karla Abrahamsen went to Germany. She was already pregnant then, but Solomonsen was not the father of the child. This ignorance of who his birth father was weighed on Erikson all his life. He did not find out from his mother or through intensive research he did his entire life. He himself had the idea that his father was a Danish nobleman .

Erikson grew up for the first three years in Frankfurt am Main with his mother named Erik Abrahamsen . In 1905 his mother and the Jewish pediatrician Theodor Homburger, who had treated the child, married. Erikson now got the stepfather's surname and was henceforth Erik Homburger . The family moved to Karlsruhe . Throughout his childhood, it was hidden from him that his stepfather was not his biological father. Erikson had two half-sisters, Ellen and Ruth.

Way to work

After attending the Karlsruhe Bismarck High School , Erikson studied at an art academy . This was followed by years of traveling as an artist. He then worked as a tutor to an American family in Vienna . Contact with the psychoanalytic movement came through this family. Erikson met Anna Freud and came into contact with her training analysis . He also became known with Sigmund Freud , Heinz Hartmann , Ernst Kris , Eva Rosenfeld and Helene Deutsch . This aroused his interest in psychoanalysis: he gave up painting, underwent training analysis and trained as a psychoanalyst.

Own family

In Vienna, Erik Erikson met his future wife, the Canadian teacher and dance scholar Joan Serson , in 1929 . Between 1931 and 1944 the couple had four children: Kai Theodor (* 1931), Jon (* 1933), Sue (* 1938) and Neil (* 1944). Despite the intensive work in the psychoanalytical field, Erikson and his wife never subjected themselves to psychoanalysis - family life was characterized by "patterns of silence" and by a distant relationship between the father and his children, as his daughter describes:

"He had always left the raising of the children to my mother because he considered himself pitifully incompetent in all these things, while my mother was extraordinarily gifted."

Since Neil was diagnosed with Down syndrome after birth , Erikson made the decision to send the child to a home without the knowledge of his wife. This was taboo both within the family and externally - the family moved away and there was no contact with him. Neil died at the age of 21. Maintaining a perfect "facade" was a heavy burden on the family:

“The public image they gave represented everything they dearly wanted to be, while in their private lives they were haunted by unexplored, unexplained feelings about their relationship with Neil, their relationships with one another, and their relationship with their three other children . "

Emigration and career path

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, Erikson emigrated with his wife and first son Kai from Vienna via Copenhagen to the United States of America . He settled in Boston and opened the city's first child psychoanalysis.

After arriving in the USA, the couple changed the previous family name "Homburger" : their son Kai was given the surname "Erikson" instead - from "Erik's son" based on the Scandinavian tradition of surnaming . Joan and the children born later also received this family name. Only Erikson himself kept the surname of his stepfather as the middle part of his name: "Erik H. Erikson" .

In 1938 he lived for a while with Sioux Indians and analyzed their coexistence. The following year, Erikson became an American citizen. He later traveled to the north west coast of California to study the Yurok Indian fishing tribe . In the United States, he became professor of developmental psychology at the elite universities of Berkeley and Harvard , without ever having completed a university degree . In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . At Harvard he developed and published his now famous step model of psychosocial development , a further development of the Freudian model of psychosexual development, which divides the development of humans from birth to death into eight phases. In each of these phases of the development model there is a development-specific crisis , the solution of which paves the way for further development. Erikson's key concept for understanding the human psyche is identity , or ego identity, in contrast to ego development , which usually stagnates in young adulthood.

Erikson developed the phase model together with his wife Joan Erikson - he hadn't studied, but she did. He himself later stated that he could not distinguish his own part from hers - the daughter also describes the work of her parents explicitly and in detail as a “division of labor”. The mutual emotional dependency led to numerous tensions, which, however, were not openly discussed. In addition, Joan translated or corrected his work because she had learned English as her mother tongue, but he hadn't. In his last years and after his death, she further developed the joint model and added a 9th phase of life to the very old age.

In the Eriksons' phase model, each crisis is characterized by polarities:

• Basic trust - basic distrust
• Autonomy - shame / doubt
• Initiative - feeling guilty
• Achievement - feeling of inferiority
• Identity - Identity Diffusion
• Intimacy - isolation
• Generativity - stagnation
• I-Integrity - Despair

It is assumed that these phases are age-specific, building on one another and universal . However, this is a matter of dispute.

In addition to child and developmental psychology, Erikson also dealt with ethnology . Here he coined the fruitful term pseudospeciation in 1968 : primitive man would have formed tribes that usually behaved like separate species ( pseudospecies ) and competed with one another.

Erikson wrote psychoanalytically oriented biographies about Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi from the 1950s , among other things in connection with the concept of generativity, which he founded . With his book about Luther he became a pioneer in psychohistory . The Australian historian Lyndal Roper , who teaches in Great Britain, is methodically following his successor , among other things in her detailed studies also on Luther. Erikson received the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his biography on Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi's Truth, 1969) .

End of life

In the mid-1980s, Erikson began to increasingly withdraw emotionally and mentally. During this phase, his wife continued to work increasingly alone.

Psychological situation

Erikson struggled with "a tendency to depression " throughout his life . He suffered from feelings of own worthlessness, insecurity and inadequacy. When he met his wife in 1929, he had just recovered from a major depression. His wife became an indispensable support for him because of her emotional strength.

Connection with other theories

In her article "Personality development according to E. Erikson's theory and according to the A-model", the psychologist and socionist Tatiana Prokofieva described the connection between Erikson's developmental phases and the psychological functions from the socionic A-model. Every psychological function goes through a phase of particularly intense development in a person's life. Erikson describes these development phases. The transition from stage 6 to 7 according to Erikson corresponds to the transition from socionic functions 8 to 2 (creative function) and is generally known as the midlife crisis .

Phases (Erikson)	Mental functions ( socionics )	Age of particularly intensive development
I. Basic trust vs. Primal distrust	5. Suggestive function	1 year of life
II. Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt	6. Activation function	2–3 years of age
III. Initiative vs. Guilt	4. Vulnerability function	4–5 years of age
IV. Work sense vs. Feeling of inferiority	3. Role function	6-11 years of age
V. Identity vs. I-identity diffusion	7. Control function (restriction function)	12-18 years of age
VI. Intimacy and solidarity vs. isolation	8. Standard function (background function)	early adulthood
VII. Generativity vs. Stagnation and self-absorption	2. Creative function	Adulthood
VIII. I Integrity vs. Despair	1. Basic function	mature adulthood

Works (selection)

• Insight and responsibility ; Frankfurt a. M. (1964) 1971
• Identity and life cycle. Three essays ; Frankfurt a. M. 1966; 2nd edition 1973
• Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History . WW Norton, 1958, ISBN 0-393-00170-9 .
  • German edition: The young man Luther. A psychoanalytic and historical study . 1975.
• Gandhi's truth. On the origins of militant non-violence , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978; 3rd edition Frankfurt 1984, ISBN 3-518-27865-7
• Youth and crisis ; Stuttgart 1970
• The full life cycle ; Frankfurt a. M. 1988; 2nd edition 1992
• Childhood and Society ; New York 1950; Childhood and society ; Zurich 1957

literature

• Daniel Burston: Erik Erikson and the American Psyche. Ego, Ethics and Evolution. Aronson, Lanham et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-7657-0494-8 ( Psychological Issues ).
• Peter Conzen: Erik H. Erikson. Life and work. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1996, ISBN 3-17-012828-0 .
• Peter Conzen: Erik H. Erikson. Basic positions of his work. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 2010, ISBN 3-17-021075-0 .
• Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89806-501-6 ( library of psychoanalysis ).
• Hubert Hofmann, Stiksrud Arne (Ed.): Giving shape to life. Erik H. Erikson from an interdisciplinary point of view. Krammer, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-901811-14-1 .
• Roland Kaufhold : Searching for traces of the history of the Viennese psychoanalytic educators who emigrated from the USA. In: Thomas Aichhorn (Hrsg.): History of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association. 1938-1949. Part 1. Edition Diskord, Tübingen 2003, pp. 37-69 ( Lucifer-Amor, year 16, issue 31, ISSN  0933-3347 ).
• Juliane Noack: Erik H. Erikson - Identity and Life Cycle. In: Benjamin Jörissen, Jörg Zirfas (Hrsg.): Key works of identity research. A textbook. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-15806-8 , pp. 37-53.
• Juliane Noack: Erik H. Eriksons Identity Theory. Athena Verlag, Oberhausen 2005, ISBN 3-89896-232-6 ( Pedagogy. Perspectives and Theories 6), (At the same time: Siegen, Univ., Diss., 2005).
• Josef Rattner : Erik H. Erikson . In: Josef Rattner: Classics of depth psychology. Psychologie-Verlags-Union, Munich et al. 1990, ISBN 3-621-27102-3 , pp. 561-583.
• Paul Roazen : Erik H. Erikson. The Power and Limits of a Vision. The Free Press, New York NY, 1976, ISBN 0-02-926450-2 .
• Tatiana Prokofieva : Personality development according to E. Ericson's theory and A-Modell - In Russian: Развитие личности по теории Э. Эриксона и по модели А

Web links

• Literature by and about Erik H. Erikson in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Erik H. Erikson  in the German Digital Library
• Manfred Rosenbach, Development of Personality - a Sequence of »Psycho-Social Crises«
• C. George Boeree, Personality Theories : Erik Erikson (PDF; 243 kB)

supporting documents

1. ↑ Peter Conzon: Erik Erikson. Basic positions of his work . Stuttgart 2010, p. 12.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Sue Erikson Bloland: In the shadow of fame. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007.
3. ↑ Erikson, EH: Life story and historical moment . Frankfurt 1977, p. 25.
4. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 55.
5. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 61.
6. ↑ He broke off the analysis that Anna Freud had started (Sue Erikson Bloland: In the shadow of fame. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 74)
7. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson. Giessen 2007, p. 79.
8. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 32.
9. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 24ff.
10. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 37.
11. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 59f.
12. ↑ Flammer, August: Development Theories. Psychological theories of human development. 4th edition. Hans Huber, Bern 2009.
13. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 75ff.
14. ↑ Erikson, Erik H./Erikson, Joan M .: The Life Cycle Completed (Extended Version) . New York 1997.
15. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007.
16. ↑ Faltermaier / Mayring / Saup / Strehmel: Developmental Psychology of Adulthood. 3. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, pp. 55–60.
17. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 150f.
18. ↑ Sue Erikson Bloland: In the Shadow of Glory. Memories of my father Erik H. Erikson . Giessen 2007, p. 64f. and 176f.