Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Hamburger Eriksonwas a German-born American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychosocial 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth15 June 1902
CityFrankfurt, Germany
CountryUnited States of America
baby facts controlled
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.
destiny personality
Personality, too, is destiny.
brother doubt shame
Doubt is the brother of shame.
tragedy facts life-is
The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy.
children reality playing-outside
The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.
life death children
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
children mistake accomplishment
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.
healing self play
Play is the most natural method of self-healing that childhood affords.
children may principles
Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.
teaching order giving
The strengths a young person finds in adults at this time-their willingness to let him experiment, their eagerness to confirm him at his best, their consistency in correcting his excesses, and the guidance they give him-will codetermine whether or not he eventually makes order out of necessary inner confusion and applies himself to the correction of disordered conditions. He needs freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that he cannot, in fact, make a choice.
wise years people
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.
hope alive life-is
Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
feelings identity alive
In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.
children mean kids
It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.