Erik Erikson was born on June 15, 1902 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father is said to have abandoned his family or died before Erickson was born. His mother remarried Theodore Homburger, the pediatrician who treated her during her pregnancy.In 1930 Erikson was wed to Joan Mowat Serson. They produced three children, Kai, John, and Sue. During this time he joined friends, Peter Blos and Dorothy Burlingham, Anne Freuds colleague, in the development of a small childrens school in Vienna. This led to his training analysis being taught by Anne Freud, and lots a clinical work. He acquired a Montessori diploma and graduated from Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1933.After moving to the United States, he began private practice and an assortment of research appointments at places such as Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, University of California at Berkeley and Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts to name a few. Before his untimely death in May 1994, he took time off for work abroad, such as places like India where he also conducted an intensive study of Ghandi.Erikson is best known for his theory of eight stages of Psychosocial Development. Eriksons theory is different from similar theories made by other psychologists in that it spans the entire life cycle as opposed to only the first five years of life, which many believed was when personality development ended.Eriksons eight stages of psychosocial development theory combines both internal psychological factors and external social factors. Each of the eight stages builds upon the others and centers on a specific crisis or challenge that must be fixed during that stage in order to move effectively onto the next stage of development (see chart). Erikson better explains it by stating, The person faced with a choice between two ways of coping with each crisis, an adaptive, or maladaptive way. Only when each crisis is resolved, which involves a change ...
