10 Quotes & Sayings By Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on February 8, 1902. He received his medical degree in 1928 and practiced psychiatry in Copenhagen until 1939. Erikson emigrated to the United States in 1939 and taught at Columbia University until 1948. He then became professor of child development at Harvard University for the rest of his life Read more

Erikson is best known for his theory of psychosocial development. His other major works include Childhood and Society (1950), The Life Cycle Completed (1963), Essays on Love (1971), and Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968).

1
It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that – bring them up – and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself – finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you. Erik Erikson
2
Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom. Erik Erikson
3
Do not mistake a child for his symptom. Erik Erikson
4
Genius as such can neither be explained nor treated away only at times its delay and inhibition and its perversion to destructive or self-destructive ends. Erik Erikson
5
There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding, which constitutes a new hope and a new responsibility for all. Erik Erikson
6
The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others. Erik Erikson
7
When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age. Erik Erikson
8
Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them in fact the family brings up baby by being brought up by him. Erik Erikson
9
Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind. Erik Erikson