Erik Homburger Erikson

Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T. Erikson, is a noted American sociologist.

Despite lacking a bachelor's degree, Erikson served as a professor at prominent institutions, including Harvard, University of California (UC Berkeley), and Yale. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Erikson as the 12th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Main contributions：
①Theories of development and the ego
Erikson is also credited with being one of the originators of ego psychology, which stressed the role of the ego as being more than a servant of the id. Although Erikson accepted Freud's theory, he did not focus on the parent-child relationship and gave more importance to the role of the ego, particularly the person's progression as self. According to Erikson, the environment in which a child lived was crucial to providing growth, adjustment, a source of self-awareness and identity. Erikson won a Pulitzer Prize and a US National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion for Gandhi's Truth (1969), which focused more on his theory as applied to later phases in the life cycle.

②Erikson's theory of personality
Favorable outcomes of each stage are sometimes known as virtues, a term used in the context of Erikson's work as it is applied to medicine, meaning "potencies". These virtues are also interpreted to be the same as "strengths", which are considered inherent in the individual life cycle and in the sequence of generations. Erikson's research suggests that each individual must learn how to hold both extremes of each specific life-stage challenge in tension with one another, not rejecting one end of the tension or the other. Only when both extremes in a life-stage challenge are understood and accepted as both required and useful, can the optimal virtue for that stage surface. Thus, 'trust' and 'mis-trust' must both be understood and accepted, in order for realistic 'hope' to emerge as a viable solution at the first stage. Similarly, 'integrity' and 'despair' must both be understood and embraced, in order for actionable 'wisdom' to emerge as a viable solution at the last stage.


Selected works by Erik Erikson
Childhood and Society (1950)
Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958)
Insight and Responsibility (1966)
Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968)
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969)
Life History and the Historical Moment (1975)
Adulthood (edited book, 1978)
Vital Involvement in Old Age (with J. M. Erikson and H. Kivnick, 1986)
The Life Cycle Completed (with J. M. Erikson, 1987)

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Erikson