Erik Erikson was a German psychiatrist who contributed greatly to the understanding of the human mind, was born in Frankfurt in 1902 and died nearly a century later, in 1994, in Massachusetts, USA. Usa, His name is one of the best known in the world. field of mind sciences.
Erik Erikson’s main contribution was in terms of evolutionary psychology, who postgraduate the existence of eight human ages, each with its own characteristics, achievements and losses, although he graduated and worked as a psychoanalyst, his approaches were resumed by the so-called humanist. Psychology.
- “In the social jungle of human existence.
- There is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.
- “? Erik Erikson-.
As is often the case in the lives of great psychologists and psychoanalysts, Erik Erikson’s childhood was not without problems: his father abandoned his mother from birth; Erikson’s mother was a young Danish woman who was left alone with the child during her early years. pediatrician of Jewish descent.
Erik Erikson’s mother told him that his father had abandoned them, maybe that’s why I grew up a kind of unruly rebel, he was scruffy and had no clear goals for his life, although he is a good student, he doesn’t stand out much and everyone finds them distracted and restless.
When he finished school, he decided he wanted to be an artist, and so began a stage marked by instability. He went to class and alternated this activity with trips to different places in Europe, to know the artistic manifestations of the continent, sometimes he walked like a beggar and slept under the bridges.
Much later, Erik Erikson wrote a book entitled “Autobiographical Notes on the Identity Crisis,” in which he talks about those years when he didn’t know exactly which direction to take.
When Erikson turned 25 wanted to change the course of his life, a friend advised him to take an available place at an experimental school, which Dorothy Burlingham, who in turn was very close to Anna Freud, did. there he began to meet and formulate a life project.
He became interested in pedagogy and thus obtained a certificate in “Montessori Education”. Soon, thanks to the influence of Anna Freud, she studied child psychoanalysis at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. Later, she decided to become an analyst and was it Anna Freud he he he himself who did psychoanalysis?necessary to begin her practice as a therapist.
Erik Erikson later married a dancer and, years later, had to deal with the problems of World War II, which led him to emigrate to the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard University, where he forged friendships that fed him significantly then worked at Yale University and California.
Although he worked on a wide range of topics, it was his theory of psychosocial development that led him to have a place of his own in the world of psychology, incorporated knowledge in pedagogy, psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology, what he did was a reinterpretation of the psychosexual development phases suggested by Sigmund Freud.
Erikson created the psychology of the Self, which considers the essential force of human life, a theory that gives it great importance in the social aspect and biological development as determinants of the individual’s life.
He argued that at every stage of life certain specific skills are acquired, which determine the next evolution, these skills are essentially psychosocial and involve a conflict between the old and the new state.
The eight ages of man, according to Erik Erikson, are, in order
Erik Erikson’s theory had a significant impact on American psychology and later around the world; today it still has a strong influence on research and the therapeutic field, it is an interesting and deeply human approach.