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Erik Erikson Biography

Erik Homberger 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.

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Erik Erikson Quotes

When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.

Lots, People, See, Wise, Years

Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.

Interdependence, Learn, Life, Needs, Sense, We Need Each Other

Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact. . . the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.

Baby, Brings, Controlled, Facts, Families

Let us face it: 'deep down' nobody in his right mind can visualize his own existence without assuming that he has always lived and will live hereafter.

Mind, Faces, Assuming, Face, Nobody

Play is the most natural method of self-healing that childhood affords.

Affords, Healing, Natural, Play, Self

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

Accomplishment, Children, Failure, Hateful, Mistake

The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy.

Conscience, Facts, Life Is, Remains, Throughout, Tragedy

Personality, too, is destiny.

Healing, Destiny, Personality

Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice.

Adolescents, Choices, Choose, Facts, Freedom, Needs

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.

Artist, Children, Creativity, Paint, Seeing

In America nature is autocratic, saying, "I am not arguing, I am telling you.

America, Arguing, Nature, Saying, Telling

Will, therefore, is the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint, in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.

Determination, Exercise, Infancy, Self, Spite

Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent wishes, in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the beginning of existence. Hope is the ontogenetic basis of faith, and is nourished by the adult faith which pervades patterns of care.

Adults, Dark, Faith, Hope, Urges, Wish

When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.

Compel, Crises, Mean, Men, Unfinished, War

If one sees the personality not as an apparatus that is essentially constructed by the time childhood is over, but as always in its essence developing, then life at 25 or 30 or at the gateway to middle age will stimulate its own intrigue, surprise, and exhilaration of discovery.

Developing, Discovery, Essence, Gateway, Inspirational

If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.

Being Strong, Concerns, Face, Generation, Life, Responsibility

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.

Children, Playing Outside, Reality, Sideward, Stages, Steps

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.

Death, Fear, Integrity, Life

If life is to be sustained, hope must remain.

Anticipation, Ifs, Life, Life Is, Remain, Sustained

These same experiences make of the sequence of life cycles a generational cycle, irrevocably binding each generation to those that gave it life and to those for whose life it is responsible. Thus, reconciling lifelong generativity and stagnation involves the elder in a review of his or her own years of active responsibility for nurturing the next generations, and also in an integration of earlier-life experiences of caring and of self-concern in relation to previous generations.

Caring, Cycles, Experiences, Responsibility, Self, Stagnation

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