ERIK ERIKSON'S CHILDHOOD AND SOCIETY ...we are also forced to recognize a universal blind spot in the makers and interpreters of history... they ignore the fateful function of childhood in the fabric of society...
Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, 1950 p. 404
Welchman (2000) reports that Erik Erikson was born in 1902 near Frankfort Germany. For many years, he studied art and languages. He also traveled a good deal, keeping a diary of his experiences. After finishing art school, he taught art as well as other subjects to children. It was during this time that his interest in psychology grew and he was admitted into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1933, Erikson came to the United States where he was Boston's first child analyst and obtained a position at the Harvard Medical School. Later on, he held positions at various institutions including Yale, Berkeley, and the Menninger Foundation. Erikson then returned to California to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto and later the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, where he was a clinician and psychiatric consultant.
In terms of the school of thought that most influenced Erickson's (1950) developmental notions as given in Childhood and Society, Pervin (1980) states that it was Freud. Although Erikson's views differ from Freud, Pervin points out that the difference is one of expansion on Freudian theory and not negation of it. Regarding Freud's influence and school of thought, t
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