Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson (1902 - 1994) is the author of Childhood and Society. Since Childhood and Society is a non-fiction book that gives a psychological theory of childhood development, Erikson is its most important person. Erikson was born in Germany to Danish parents, his lifelong interest in identity psychology began here. When Erikson grew up, he was a teacher of dancing and the arts, teaching at a Viennese private school. At this time, he came to know Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, went through psychoanalysis and then became a psychoanalyst himself.

After graduating from college in 1933, Erikson and his wife moved to Denmark and then the United States, where Erikson became a child psychoanalyst. Over the next seventeen years, Erikson compiled the research that became Childhood and Society. The book is a significant achievement in clinical psychology for numerous reasons, including its attempt to synthesize psychoanalysis and cultural...