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
children mistake triumph
Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
children successful reality
The growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience (his ego synthesis) is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan.
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.
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.
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.
encouragement children real
Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.
children miracle stages-of-development
There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.
children creativity artist
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.
dim homage inclusive knowledge leaders men paying purest rules shown simplest taught
Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.
future save species
The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live.
cannot entirely history observers
We cannot leave history entirely to nonclinical observers and to professional historians.
history
The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'