Erik Erikson - North America

North America

Erikson's wife, Joan Serson Erikson, was born in Canada. They married in 1930 and Erikson converted to Christianity during their marriage.

Soon after his graduation from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany. Now Erikson and his wife emigrated, first to Denmark and then to the United States, where he became the first child psychoanalyst in Boston. Erikson held positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Judge Baker Guidance Center, and at Harvard Medical School and Psychological Clinic, establishing a singular reputation as a clinician.

In 1936, Erikson joined the staff at Harvard University, where he worked at the Institute of Human Relations and taught at the Medical School. After spending a year observing children on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, he moved to the University of California at Berkeley; there he affiliated with the Institute of Child Welfare and opened a private practice as well. While in California, Erikson also studied children of the Yurok Native American tribe.

In 1950, after publishing the book, Childhood and Society, for which he is best known, Erikson left the University of California when professors there were asked to sign loyalty oaths. He spent ten years working and teaching at the Austen Riggs Center, a prominent psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he worked with emotionally troubled young people.

He returned to Harvard in the 1960s as a professor of human development and remained there until his retirement in 1970. In 1973 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Erikson for the Jefferson Lecture, the United States' highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Erikson's lecture was titled "Dimensions of a New Identity".