Erikson on Development in Adulthood: New Insights from the Unpublished Papers

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Oxford University Press, 2001 M12 13 - 304 pages
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was one of the most eminent and prolific psychologists of the 20th century. Over his long career he published a dozen books, including classics such as Childhood and Society; Identity, Youth, and Crisis; and Young Man Luther . He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1970 for his biography Gandhi's Truth. It was also in 1970, when he retired from Harvard University, that Erikson began to rethink his earlier theories of development. He became increasingly occupied with the conflicts and challenges of adulthood--a shift from his earlier writings on the "identity crises" of adolescence. For the past twenty years, Carol Hoare has written extensively on various aspects of Erikson's work. She has been aided by access to Erikson's unpublished papers at Harvard, as well as cooperation with Joan Erikson, the psychologist's wife and longtime collaborator. By reconstructing Erikson's theory of adulthood from his unpublished papers, Hoare provides not only a much-needed revision of Erikson's work, but also a glimpse into the mind of one of the 20th century's most profound thinkers.

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Contents

1 Introduction
3
2 Eriksons Thought in Context
7
3 Erikson and Rethinking the Meaning of Adult
23
4 Prejudiced Adult
41
5 MoralEthical Spiritual Adult
71
6 Playing Childlike Adult
113
7 Historically and Culturally Relative Adult
145
8 Insightful Adult
171
9 Wise Adult
185
10 Acclaim and Criticism for Eriksons Theory and His Concepts of the Adult
199
Notes
225
Index
269
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Page 129 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Page 140 - The child's toys and the old man's reasons Are the fruits of the two seasons. The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply. He who replies to words of doubt Doth put the light of knowledge out.
Page 34 - But a creative man has no choice. He may come across his supreme task almost accidentally. But once the issue is joined, his task proves to be at the same time intimately related to his most personal conflicts, to his superior selective perception, and to the stubbornness of his one-way will: he must court sickness, failure, or insanity, in order to test the alternative whether the established world will crush him, or whether he will disestablish a sector of this world's outworn fundaments and make...
Page 76 - At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firmly on the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of heaven. At sixty, I heard them with a docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right ( 1 1 .4).
Page 76 - The Master said : At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right...
Page 44 - The term denotes the fact that while man is obviously one species, he appears and continues on the scene split up into groups (from tribe to nations, from castes to classes, from religions to ideologies) which provide their members with a firm sense of distinct and superior identity — and immortality.
Page 55 - lowest" in man is thus apt to reappear in the guise of the "highest." Irrational and pre-rational combinations of goodness, doubt, and rage can re-emerge in the adult in those malignant forms of righteousness and prejudice which we may call moralism. In the name of high moral principles all the vindictiveness of derision, of torture, and of mass extinction can be employed.

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