The Erik Erikson Reader [Paperback]

Erik H. Erikson (Author), Robert Coles (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001

"This volume, ably assembled and introduced by Robert Coles, presents the Essential Erikson."—Howard Gardner

Erik H. Erikson is recognized as one of the world’s leading figures in the field of psychoanalysis and human development. His ideas about the stages of development, the sources of identity, and the interdependence of individual growth and historical change revolutionized our understanding of the nature and course of psychological growth. Erikson, whose work first described the now familiar concepts of "identity crisis" and "life cycle," provided an unprecedented framework for considering the individual psyche within society and culture. Unveiling a dynamic process of psychological development, he emphasized the tendency toward growth and the integration of multiple influences—the biological, social, psychological, cultural, and historical. With writings from Erikson’s entire career, including major work from Childhood and Society, Insight and Responsibility, Young Man Luther, and Gandhi’s Truth, this invaluable reader charts the influence of Erikson’s thinking in the areas of child psychology, development through the lifespan, leadership, and moral growth.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A welcome collection of excerpts and essays from the work of the celebrated psychoanalyst (A Way of Looking at Things, 1987, etc.) who died in 1994. Coles, the eminent colleague and biographer of Erikson (Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson, p. 506), divides this volume into five sections: Coless Introduction; On Children, Nearby and Far Away; On Psychoanalysis and Human Development; On Leaders; and On Moral Matters. The most extensive selections are from the now-classic Childhood and Society and Young Man Luther. For those who have never read Eriksonor have not read him in a while (his last book appeared a dozen years ago)the compilation vividly illustrates the vast scope of his thought, explains the elements of his theories of development, and displays the language of an author whose best writing was often as lyrical as it was instructive. Commenting on his own profession, for example, Erikson writes: ``A man, I will submit, could begin to study man's inner world only by appointing his own neurosis that angel with whom he must wrestle and whom he must not let go until his blessing, too, has been given.'' Erikson writes about a dazzling array of subjectsfrom the Lakota Sioux to Tom Sawyer (whose behavior at the fence-whitewashing Erikson playfully explores) to Martin Luther, Gandhi, and Jesus. He studies the small as well as the great, as in his account of a Yurok ``doctor,'' an aged woman of the tribe, who sucks from the navel of a disturbed child the pain that afflicts him. Eriksons achievement, as presented by Coles, readily justifies such occasional excesses as his occasional descent into psychobabble: ``A man should act in such a way that he actualizes both in himself and in the other such forces as are ready for a heightened mutuality. Edited with intelligence and visiona volume that confirms Erikson's honored place in the pantheon of psychological theorists. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

This volume, ably assembled and introduced by Robert Coles, presents the Essential Erikson. -- Howard Gardner

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332091X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393320916
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars integrated historical, psychological and political theories, September 30, 2005

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FrizzText "frizz" (Wuppertal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Erik Erikson Reader (Paperback)

Erik Erikson (1902-1994), famous German-American psychotherapist, was born in Frankfurt, his biological father was a Dane remained unnamed, his mother, Karla Abrahamsen, was a young Jewish woman, who married three years after Erik's birth Dr. Theodor Homberger.
During the Nazi period the family emigrated to the USA, where Erik indicated the surname "Erikson" (chosen freely) for the immigration authority. Because his parents at first hid the biological identity from young Erik, at first he had felt as Erik Abrahamsen-Homberger; the modification into the well sounding "Erik Erikson" was (of course) connected with the search for his biological (unsolved, Danish) "Roots".
His books about "identity crisis", "life circles", about "Childhood and Society" and so on: practice an analysis of both common and personal interest. His own curriculum vitae is an example of developing an identity as well as the subjects he tried to describe (Luther, Hitler, Gandhi ...);
Not only, that in his childhood (in Nuernberg) his Jewish identity was hidden completely (favored by a fair-haired outside) in the Nazi Germany; at first it was his aim in his student time of becoming an artist. He slept under bridges, walking through Europe. Later he always tended more towards the psychological knowledge area, could be trained to a Montessori teacher, influenced by his friend Peter Blos, then (in Vienna) he managed to get a psychoanalysis by the famous daughter of Sigmund Freud, Anna; after that (emigrated to the USA) he started with ethnological researches at the Dakota Indians: so his own identity changed gradually in the course of his life.
The geographical changes surely also caused a personality alteration: In Vienna he became acquainted with his later wife Joan Serson, a Canadian dance teacher; avoiding the Nazis, the family went to Copenhagen (searching for roots), then to Boston. He finally took lectureships for the University of Harvard, then Yale, then Berkeley.
In the fifties he developed disgust of the McCarthy era and let rest his teaching for several years.
His remark "Identity is the intersection point between what a person wants to be and what the world allows to be" is more than only illustrated by the changeable outside worlds in Erikson's biography.
It is worthwhile to look at his additional publications (after his major work "Identity and the Life Cycle"), too:
he analyses Hitler, Gorki and the conditions of life of the Sioux Indian tribe "Oglala Dakota" ( in "Childhood and Society"). For his book "Gandhis truth" he got the Pulitzer Price.
Focusing the interdependence of individual growth and historical change (Young Man Luther, A Study in Psychoanalysis and History) he was the important founder of multiple-method-search-procedures for integrated historical, psychological, social and political theories.
The question of the development of identity therefore is Erikson's main topic, which is experienced at his own body
- essentially for everyone, who likes to analyse biographies ...