Part I, Childhood and the Modalities of Social Life, Chapter 1, Relevance and Relativity in the Case History Summary and Analysis

Erikson opens by lamenting the fact that child psychology has struggled for so long to be scientific yet so consistently failed. This proves embarrassing to any science that must work hard to develop a systematic method. However, progress has been made, although progress brings challenges of its own. For instance, understanding neuroses as diseases is particularly difficult and leads to a new definition of disease. Thus, Erikson begins with a specimen of pathology, the sudden onset of a "violent somatic disturbance" in a child.

Sam, the study case, is three years old and lives in northern California. One night he wakes his mother by making strange noises. Initially the...