Word: erikson
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...first thrusts of Nazi power broke up the magic circle; in 1933 Erikson and his Canadian-born wife migrated to the U.S. His studies variously took him to Berkeley, Cambridge and the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Mass. He has spent time in the poor sections of Pittsburgh and on two Indian reservations, where he reflected upon the wisdom of "primitive" child-rearing practices. During World War II he did research assignments for the Government, and afterward worked four years to complete Childhood and Society...
Today, at 68, Erikson lives quietly in Stockbridge. Although he has not been a practicing psychoanalyst for years, a steady outpouring of books-as well as the constantly growing fame of his basic theories-has made him increasingly influential. In 1958 he produced Young Man Luther, which helped trace the Protestant Reformation to Martin Luther's resolution of Erikson's Life Stage 5 ("Identity v. Role Confusion"). He won the 1969 National Book Award for Gandhi's Truth, a study of the man, his ideals and the techniques of nonviolence. Erikson embarked upon it in part...
About his own renown Erikson is modest. All he has to offer, he says, is "a way of looking at things." At this moment in history, it is a most helpful, hopeful and even necessary way. Behind the glib label "identity" is the broad conviction that the ego is not some wavering horizon line between the superego and the id but an organized entity in which one can have what Erikson calls "accrued confidence." In the search for identity, even the generations are allowed a more positive role. Erikson was fascinated by G.B. Shaw's "eight years of solitude...
Psychic Catastrophe. In short, Erikson's thinking takes in all of life-its struggles, victories and defeats-and sees it as a gradual unfolding. It is an optimistic philosophy, but he is no pollyanna. At every turn, he believes, there is as much chance for psychic catastrophe as for emotional growth. "When I talk about hope and basic trust," he says, "I am not referring to good manners or to the niceties of personality, but to the minimum conditions for human survival...
...holding press conferences in William Sloane Coffin's living room. (The dean of the ad hoc press corps was a J. Press-outfitted Time reporter who later said that Coffin had been his Sacred Studies teacher at Andover.) The leaders of the group- Hersey and Coffin and Kenniston and Erikson- were the same people who always occupied centerstage at Yale...