Erik Erikson

13 Pages 3310 Words

a discussion of the “American Personality”, and the basic outline of his version of the Freudian theory. Those themes, the influence of culture on personality, and the analyses of historical figures, were repeated in other works of his such as Ghandi’s Truth, which one him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award (Sharkey, 1999). Most importantly, in Childhood and Society, Erikson introduced the outline of the famous eight stages of psychosocial development. Erikson created these stages by observing. While teaching at different Universites he would still go and observe the Sioux and Yurok tribes. About the times he was doing this was when all the Native Americans were being forced off their land onto reservations, and being told to change their entire way of life. Erikson knew that the social development was hard and different for every culture, and unlike Freud’s belief, Erikson believed it lasted the course of one persons whole life, not just the first five years (Erikson, 1950).
Directly after publishing his first book in 19...