Identity's Architect

by Friedman, Lawrence J.

• ISBN13: 9780684195254
• ISBN10: 0684195259
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Scribner

Summary

Identity's Architect is the first comprehensive biography of Erik Erikson, postwar America's most influential psychological thinker, who decisively reshaped our views of human development. Drawing on private materials and extensive interviews, award-winning historian Lawrence J. Friedman illuminates the relationship between Erikson's personal life and his groundbreaking notion of the life cycle and the identity crisis. A decade in the making, this book is indispensable for anyone who hopes to understand fully the life and intellectual legacy of one of the most significant figures of our time.

Author Biography

Lawrence J. Friedman is professor of history at Indiana University and the author of four previous books. His Menninger: The Family and the Clinic was a finalist for the 1991 Albert J. Beveridge Award and Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism won the Ohioana Book Award. He is a four-time recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mr. Friedman directs the Indiana Arts and Humanities Forum and is an activist for the rights of minorities, scholars, and the mentally ill.

Table of Contents

Foreword	15	(4)
Robert Coles
Preface	19	(8)
1. Toward a New Beginning: Infancy, Childhood, Youth	27	(32)
2. Vienna Years: Psychoanalysis as a Calling, 1927-33	59	(44)
3. "The Making of an American": From Homburger to Erikson, 1933-39	103	(46)
4. A Cross-Cultural Mosaic: Childhood and Society	149	(50)
5. Lives in Cycle: Childhood and Society II	199	(44)
6. Voice and Authenticity: The 1950s	243	(60)
7. Professor and Public Intellectual: The 1960s	303	(62)
8. Global Prophet: Erikson's Truth	365	(54)
9. Public and Private Matters of Old Age	419	(38)
10. "The Shadow of Nonbeing"	457	(22)
Postscript	479	(4)
A Bibliographical Note	483	(4)
Notes	487	(82)
Index	569