Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson

Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson

Abstract

For centuries mankind has sought to find an explanation for human behaviour. What makes one person behave in one way, and another person behave differently? Born in 1856, Sigmund Freud was a man who conveyed us out of the dark and presented us with an abundance of information about how our childhood and other stages of life leverage our behaviour, and how distinct events in our development affect our life in adulthood. So how can we compare the theories evolved by this amazing man, who is considered to be the father of up to date psychology to anyone else, especially to someone whose work is just a changed version of Freud's theories? Although Erik Erikson may have finished some research about human behaviour, and although he may have presented some good concepts, there is no question that his work is inferior compared to Sigmund Freud's theories. Therefore, be it resolved that Sigmund Freud's idea offers a better explanation of human behaviour than Erik Erikson's theory.

Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson

Introduction

Erik Erikson was an influential and pioneering psychologist, psychoanalyst, and author whose idea of the eight psychosocial stages of development deeply shaped the area of child development.(Roazen,1993) Although his best-known work is the now classic Childhood and Society (1950), additional facets of his idea were elaborated in such works as Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968) and Young Man Luther (1958). Gandhi's Truth (1969), which focused more on his idea as applied to later phases in the life cycle, garnered Erikson the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Although highly original, Erikson's work shows heavy influences from the work of Sigmund and Anna Freud, as well as from the area of cultural anthropology. (Hoffman,1993)

Discussion

Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 15, 1902 to Karla Abrahamsen, a juvenile Jewish woman. Although married, she was dwelling her family at the time of the birth, having shifted in after leaving her husband, Valdemar Salomonsen.(Hoffman,1993) A Jewish stockbroker, Salomonsen had escaped the homeland four years earlier in attachment with fraud and criminal ties. Karla Abrahamsen had engaged in an extramarital affair in his absence and become pregnant. She not ever disclosed the specific persona of her son's biological father, only that he was of Danish extraction. She listed her son's surname as "Salomonsen". Four months later, phrase arrived that she was freshly a widow; Valdemar Salomonsen was dead. (Schnell,1980)

Abrahamsen trained as a nurse and eventually remarried, when juvenile Erik was about three years old. Erik's new stepfather was his pediatrician, Theodor Homburger. Homburger, who insisted on being mentioned to as Erik's father, talked his surname on the young man in 1908 and finally adopted him in 1911. Despite this it became apparent, with the arrival of three half sisters, that Erik held a very distinct place in the family as the adopted stepson. Throughout adolescence he increasingly recognised as an outsider, both inside and in the local community. He was teased at school for being Jewish, and ...