"Do not mistake a child for his symptom."

"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."

― Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society 

The Clinical Erik Erikson: A Psychoanalytic Method of Engagement and Activation

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The twentieth century has been described as the time of man’s discovery of himself; few have contributed more to this cause than Erik Erikson. The Clinical Erik Erikson: A psychoanalytic method of engagement and activation highlights Erikson’s transforming contributions to the field of psychoanalysis and honors his legacy by providing unpublished clinical case illustrations of his psychotherapeutic work.

The publication of case material―simple memorable fragments and clinical vignettes― brings the reader into Erikson’s consultation room, providing a portrait of his clinical technique and demonstrating how he actually worked.

Stephen Schlein, an authority on Erikson, presents an illuminating account of Erikson’s pioneering work through an exhaustive search of his early monographs on child psychoanalysis, clinical writings, psychotherapeutic case studies, and participation at case conferences at The Austen Riggs Center.

Erikson’s writings reveal a psychoanalytic method of extraordinary richness that emphasizes essential ingredients of an interpersonal-relational clinical method and articulates interactional dimensions that have restorative potential. His vision focuses on the interpersonal relationship, its powerful affects, and a belief that human beings have a potent capacity for real change. This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

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See also:

• Gandhi's Truth: On The Origins Of Militant Nonviolence by Erik Erikson

• Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History by Erik Erikson

Gandhi's Truth: On The Origins Of Militant Nonviolence by Erik Erikson

Buy Gandhi's Truth here.

In this study of Mahatma Gandhi, psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson explores how Gandhi succeeded in mobilizing the Indian people both spiritually and politically as he became the revolutionary innovator of militant non-violence and India became the motherland of large-scale civil disobedience.

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History by Erik Erikson

Buy Young Man Luther here.

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History is a 1958 book by psychologist Erik Erikson, the founder of today's accepted depiction of the growth and evolution of the psyche throughout the lifelong cycle, and coiner of the term "identity crisis". It was one of the first psychobiographies of a famous historical figure. Erikson found in Martin Luther a good model of his discovery of "the identity crisis". Erikson was sure he could explain Luther's spontaneous eruption, during a monastery choir practice, "I am not!"

According to Erikson, Luther suffered through an environment that fomented crisis, and succeeded in a healthy resolution, thereby becoming more fulfilled than if the crisis had not been experienced. In the end Luther chose the obedient, provincial leadership path his father had wished for him, rather than the national fame he could have easily pursued after his celebrity and wealth, but only after Luther had disobeyed and suffered many years in an identity crisis.

Erik Erikson - Quotes

"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."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)

"Doubt is the brother of shame."
― Erik Erikson ("The Problem of Ego Identity," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1956)

"What was Freud's Galapagos, what species fluttered what kinds of wings before his searching eyes? It has often been pointed out derisively: his creative laboratory was the neurologist's office, the dominant species hysterical ladies."
― Erik Erikson (The First Psychoanalyst, 1957)

"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."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1994)

"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."
― Erik Erikson (Young Man Luther : A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, 1958)

"It is only after a reasonable sense of identity has been established that real intimacy with others can be possible. The youth who is not sure of his or her identity shies away from interpersonal intimacy, and can become, as an adult, isolated or lacking in spontaneity, warmth or the real exchange of fellowship in relationship to others; but the surer the person becomes of their self, the more intimacy is sought in the form of friendship, leadership, love and inspiration. The counterpart to intimacy is distantiation, which is the readiness to repudiate those forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to one’s own."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1959)

"Despair expresses the feeling that time is short, too short for the attempt to start a new life and to try out alternate roads to integrity. Such a despair is often hidden behind a show of disgust, or a chronic contemptuousness. Integrity, therefore, implies an emotional integration which permits participation by followership as well as acceptance of the responsibility of leadership."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1959)

"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."
― Erik Erikson (Childhood and Society, 1950)

"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."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)

"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."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)