![]() After graduation, instead of attending medical school as his stepfather had desired, he attended art school in Munich, much to the liking of his mother and her friends. At Das Humanistische Gymnasium his main interests were art, history and languages, but he lacked a general interest in school and graduated without academic distinction. At temple school, his peers teased him for being Nordic while at grammar school, he was teased for being Jewish. Due to these mixed identities, he was a target of bigotry by both Jewish and gentile children. Įrik was a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy who was raised in the Jewish religion. It is said his children enjoyed the fact they would not be called "Hamburger" any longer. " The decision to change his last name came about as he started his job at Yale, and the "Erikson" name was accepted by Erik's family when they became American citizens. "My identity confusion", he wrote " the borderline between neurosis and adolescent psychosis." Erikson's daughter wrote that her father's "real psychoanalytic identity" was not established until he "replaced his stepfather's surname with a name of his own invention. As an older adult, he wrote about his adolescent "identity confusion" in his European days. The development of identity seems to have been one of Erikson's greatest concerns in his own life as well as being central to his theoretical work. Karla and Theodor told Erik that Theodor was his real father, only revealing the truth to him in late childhood he remained bitter about the deception all his life. In 1908, Erik Salomonsen's name was changed to Erik Homburger, and in 1911 he was officially adopted by his stepfather. In 1905 she married a Jewish pediatrician, Theodor Homburger. įollowing Erik's birth, Karla trained to be a nurse and moved to Karlsruhe, Germany. She fled due to conceiving Erik out of wedlock, and the identity of Erik's birth father was never made clear. On discovering her pregnancy, Karla fled to Frankfurt am Main in Germany where Erik was born on 15 June 1902 and was given the surname Salomonsen. Little is known about Erik's biological father except that he was a non-Jewish Dane. She was married to Jewish stockbroker Valdemar Isidor Salomonsen, but had been estranged from him for several months at the time Erik was conceived. Early life Įrikson's mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came from a prominent Jewish family in Copenhagen, Denmark. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Erikson as the 12th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. He coined the phrase identity crisis.ĭespite lacking a university degree, Erikson served as a professor at prominent institutions, including Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, and Yale. Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen 15 June 1902 – ) was a German-American psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings.
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