Word: erikson
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...with the proliferation of facile "psychobiographies" that bypass class, status and political strategy, in their reduction of Hitler's, Nixon's and even the Kennedys' behavior to terms of psychopathology, it is a wonder Erikson has managed to remain so polite...
UNLIKE FREUD, HOWEVER, Erikson can take criticism. Instead of attributing attacks on him to his critics' own insecurity, he has always been quick to re-examine his own thinking and acknowledge its limitations. Even his most skeptical critics--such as Frederick Crews, who reviewed Erikson's last book of Life History and the Historical Moment in the New York Review of Books--praise him for precisely that thoughtfulness and candor. And it speaks to this ongoing curiosity and self-questioning, rare enough for an established thinker whose theories have gained such wide recognition and acclaim, that just as Roazen published...
...question Roazen tactfully raises has been the source of considerable, sometimes nasty, speculation and debate. The issue is how much Erikson's key thesis--that much of human behavior stems from the quest for a firm and acceptable "identity"--derives from his possible confusion and embarassment over his own identity. Erikson articulated the notion of a dramatic and often life-altering "identity crisis," usually occurring during adolescence, in his first book, Childhood and Society. His notion was that a break-down in sense-of-self could lead either to the perpetuation of identity confusion in a neurotic adulthood...
With the publication of his last book, however, Erikson himself became the object of some of these same questions. In a review of Life History and the Historical Moment in a New York Times Book Review, Martin Berman pointed a suspicious and defiant finger at Erikson for not laying bare the truth about his own Jewish origins, which Erikson himself at hinted at only vaguely. (Erikson readily acknowledges that his stepfather was a Jew, but Roazen notes that he makes a habit of referring to his parents by nationality only, and not by religion.) Berman also chastened Erikson...
Roazen appraises this controversy dispassionately. He presents the conjectures about Erikson's denials of his own identity, and states all the reasonable evidence that stands in their favor, letting the disparity between accusation and reality speak for itself. But even Roazen's approach seems to beg the question. The best defense to these questions is to say that they really need none. Because Erikson did not know his real father, because he was of Danish ancestry and grew up in Germany, and because he became a permanent expatriate, traveling first to Austria and then to the U.S., he is obviously...