ERIK H. ERIKSON: A LIFE’S WORK

With Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Ph.D. and Ruthie Mickles, Ph.D.

1991 (38 min) $250.   ISBN: 1-891340-57-3        [Available with Spanish Subtitles]

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Erik Erikson’s own life was dramatic: he never knew for certain who his biological father was; he had an unsettled youth as a wandering artist; he fled the Nazis with his young family and despite never having a college degree, he ended up teaching at the most prestigious American universities.   Erikson used the conflicts of his own life to hone and transform the psychoanalytic ideas he’d gained from his close contact with the Freuds into concepts on the course of life that speak to us all.  The rich variety of visuals and telling text of this film make Erikson’s ideas accessible to students.

Film content:

            The film follows Erikson’s own life course within which three major topics are discussed:

The importance of social context to understanding human behavior

                                                Biopsychosocial model

Discussion of the influences that affected Erikson’s own life including his introduction to psychoanalysis through his close association with the Freuds in Vienna.

Erikson’s visit to the Ogala Sioux in Pine Ridge, South Dakota which alerted him to the power of social influences on lives, a concept missing from the Freudian model. 

The age related conflicts in all lives (the Eight Stages Life Cycle).

The conflict in each stage, for instance the adolescent one of identity vs. role confusion,  is illustrated with telling contemporary film sequences.

The introduction of an ethical perspective into psychology.

Erikson’s writings on Luther and Gandhi illustrate how conflicts between groups of people that inevitably arise can be ethically dealt with.

Visuals:

            Interview film sequence of Erikson speaking of his work.

            Archival photos from Erikson’s life.

            Newsreel film of the wars that so impacted his life course.

            High quality portraits and wood prints done by the youthful Erikson.

            “Home movies” of Sigmund and Anna Freud in Vienna.

             The reminiscences of a man who attended the private elementary school in which Erikson taught during his Vienna years.

            Poignant photos from the Ogala Sioux reservation in the 1930’s.

            Current illustrations of each stage of the life cycle.

            Newsreel film of Gandhi.

Erik H. Erikson’s Life:

            Born 1902 to a single mother in Germany.

            Childhood and youth in Karlsruhe Germany.

            Did not attend university but traveled Europe as an artist.

            Taught in a small private school in Vienna that served the children of patients of Anna and Sigmund Freud.  Was in analysis with Anna Freud.

            Married the Canadian Joan Serson in 1928.

            Immigrated to the USA in 1933 and worked at Harvard.

            Visited the Pine Ridge reservation of the Ogala Sioux tribe, 1938.

            Worked at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1940’s.

            CHILDHOOD AND SOCIETY published 1950.

            Won the Pulitzer Prize for GHANDI’S TRUTH.

            Died 1997 in Massachusetts.

Consultants:

Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Ph.D. was one of the first women to be a full professor at Harvard. She also worked as a clinical psychologist at both the Menniger Clinic and at the Austen Riggs Clinic. Dr. Brenman-Gibson was a close colleague of Erik Erikson’s for much of her life.

            Ruthie Mickles, Ph.D., has spent her career working with recovering drug users and recently paroled former prison inmates.

Related films:

            ON OLD AGE I: A CONVERSATION WITH JOAN ERIKSON AT 90

            ON OLD AGE II: A CONVERSATION WITH JOAN ERIKSON AT 92           

  Part of the GIANTS OF PSYCHOLOGY series

            Part of the GERONTOLOGY SERIES

"Viewers should appreciate the artistic quality of the production, the psychohistorical aspects in the accounting of Erikson’s life, and the thoroughness and insightfulness in the overview of his life work."

— Beverly Hardcastle Stanford, Ph.D. Video Critic CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

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