Childhood And Society

(Paperback)

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Containing accounts of the author's field work among Sioux and Yurok Indians, and an examination of the American, German and Russian characters, this is an interpretation of human life on psychological lines. Using case histories as springboards for theoretical discussion of the formative years of childhood, Professor Erikson identifies human life as a delicate balance between bodily, mental and social influences. The main chapters are devoted to anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis.

Reviews

A rare and living combination of European and American thought in the human sciences -- Margaret Mead
A unique combination of imaginative clinical description, rigorous thinking, gentle humour and deep humanity * Science *
The application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural anthropology has nowhere found a more mature expression * Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry *

Author Bio

Born in Germany in 1902 of Danish parents, Erik H. Erikson was one of the leading figures in the field of psychoanalysis and human development. His clinical practice included the treatment of children and he made close studies of the process of growing up in a variety of social and cultural settings. He was Professor of Human Development at Harvard University, and Senior Consultant in Psychiatry for the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. He died in 1994.