Erik erikson biography edu

Erik Erikson’s relationship with Harvard spanned decades, coinciding with some of his most influential works. Born in Frankfurt, and trained in psychoanalysis in Vienna by Anna Freud, Erikson came to Boston in 1933.

He accepted an appointment as a research associate at the Harvard Psychological Clinic; in conjunction with that position Erikson started to work on a graduate degree in psychology at Harvard. Finding himself at odds with the quantitative, empirical focus of Harvard’s Psychology Department, Erikson discontinued his studies in 1936 without finishing his degree.

Erik erikson biography edu

For the next two decades he pursued his interests in human development by conducting research at Yale and Berkeley, as well as continuing his private psychoanalytic practice.

Erikson’s humanist theory of psychosocial development deviated significantly from the traditional Freudian psychosexual theory of human development in two ways.

Erikson believed that humans’ pers