Although he was a European, Erikson fashioned a theory of human development that mirrored American optimism about an individual’s ability to grow and change. Departing from the rigid Freudian notion that the ego is fixed in early childhood, Erikson demonstrated that “identity formation” is a lifelong-though largely unconscious-process. “If everything ‘goes back’ into childhood,” he warned, “then everything is somebody else’s fault, and trust in one’s own power of taking responsibility for oneself may be undermined.”

Indeed, Erikson identified the infant’s achievement of “basic trust” as a first and necessary building block in developing an ongoing sense of self. According to his classic theory of the life cycle, identity formation proceeds through a series of eight “crises” from infancy to old age. At each stage, the task is to resolve a conflict: trust versus mistrust in infancy is followed by a conflict between autonomy and shame at the age of toilet training. Confusion of roles is the problem, he saw, that defines the prototypical identity crisis of adolescents. Even in old age, he argued, we are confronted with the challenge of despair versus final integration of the ego.

As his work progressed, Erikson departed from Freud in another important way. Into Freud’s interior landscapes of the mind, Erikson wove the exterior dimensions provided by culture, society and history. Taking to the field, Erikson studied the Yurok tribe of northern California and children of the Sioux; he then showed how these Native American traditions influence individual identity formation. In short, identity, as Erikson came to see it, is rather like a delta built up by the confluence of body, mind and milieu. An individual identity development depends on the successful integration of all three elements. Even in advanced age, he believed, there could be a flowering of accumulated wisdom and altruism that has nothing to do with education or genes. Very America very democratic-and, as turned out, very true to Erikson’s own life.

Although he wrote path-breaking “psychobiographies” of Martin Luther and Gandhi (box), Erikson was 68 before he revealed the identity confusions of his own early life. His birth, it turned out. was the result of his Lutheran mother’s extramarital affair. He never knew his Danish father. He was raised as Erik Homburger, the surname of his stepfather, a German Jew and his pediatrician. To his classmates in Karlsruhe, he was a blond. Nordic Jew. But before he migrated to the United States, he changed his surname to Erik son-becoming in effect, “Erik, Son of Erik.”

At the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Erikson fell in with a heady group of Cambridge intellectuals. He later transferred to Yale and in 1939 took a position at the University of California, Berkeley There, he distinguished himself by refusing on First Amendment grounds to sign a loyalty oath, although he was not a communist. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Erikson maintained extraordinary rapport with undergraduates. At Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Mass., he also established an informal summer circle of intellectuals that included psychiatrists Robert Coles and Robert J. Lifton, psychologist Kenneth Keniston and Kai Erikson, his sociologist son. His final years were divided between Tiburon, Calif., and Harvard, where a research center is established in his name.

Always shy and rather formal, Erikson was shielded for most of his life by his wife and collaborator, Joan Serson Erikson. In 1970, for example, he refused to be photographed or interviewed in person for a NEWSWEEK cover story. Instead, he sent his own favorite portrait together with written responses to our questions-edited, as always, by his wife. Not without wit. he advised us that, yes, even an “old man” has to “restructure” his identity images. including “what he reads about himself in the press.” In death, his identity as a wide-ranging, compassionate and engaged thinker is secure.

PHOTO: Revealing how we become the ‘who’ we are: Erikson in 1964

A LEGACY IN PRINT

Erikson’s influence will continue through his enduring titles. A partial list:

Erikson elaborated his revisionist Freudian theories of identity development

Pioneering psychobiography of Martin Luther; connects religious with personal identity crisis.

Pultizer Prizewinning study of Hinduism’s celibate saint

A revision and summing up in old age of Erikson’s views on human development