Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Erikson: Post−Freudian
Theory
© The McGraw−Hill^271
Companies, 2009sequence, the Sioux children of 1937 had great difficulty achieving a sense of ego
identity, especially after they reached adolescence.
Two years later, Erikson made a similar field trip to northern California to
study people of the Yurok nation, who lived mostly on salmon fishing. Although the
Sioux and Yurok had vastly divergent cultures, each tribe had a tradition of training
its youth in the virtues of its society. Yurok people were trained to catch fish, and
therefore they possessed no strong national feeling and had little taste for war. Ob-
taining and retaining provisions and possessions were highly valued among people
of the Yurok nation. Erikson (1963) was able to show that early childhood training
was consistent with this strong cultural value and that history and society helped
shape personality.
Psychohistory
The discipline called psychohistoryis a controversial field that combines psycho-
analytic concepts with historical methods. Freud (1910/1957) originated psychohis-
tory with an investigation of Leonardo da Vinci and later collaborated with Ameri-
can ambassador William Bullitt to write a book-length psychological study of
American president Woodrow Wilson (Freud & Bullitt, 1967). Although Erikson
(1975) deplored this latter work, he took up the methods of psychohistory and re-
fined them, especially in his study of Martin Luther (Erikson, 1958, 1975) and Ma-
hatma Gandhi (Erikson, 1969, 1975). Both Luther and Gandhi had an important im-
pact on history because each was an exceptional person with the right personal
conflict living during a historical period that needed to resolve collectively what
could not be resolved individually (E. Hall, 1983).
Erikson (1974) defined psychohistory as “the study of individual and collec-
tive life with the combined methods of psychoanalysis and history” (p. 13). He used
psychohistory to demonstrate his fundamental beliefs that each person is a product
of his or her historical time and that those historical times are influenced by excep-
tional leaders experiencing a personal identity conflict.
As an author of psychohistory, Erikson believed that he should be emotionally
involved in his subject. For example, he developed a strong emotional attachment to
Gandhi, which he attributed to his own lifelong search for the father he had never
seen (Erikson, 1975). In Gandhi’s Truth,Erikson (1969) revealed strong positive
feelings for Gandhi as he attempted to answer the question of how healthy individu-
als such as Gandhi work through conflict and crisis when other people are debilitated
by lesser strife. In searching for an answer, Erikson examined Gandhi’s entire life
cycle but concentrated on one particular crisis, which climaxed when a middle-aged
Gandhi first used self-imposed fasting as a political weapon.
As a child, Gandhi was close to his mother but experienced conflict with his
father. Rather than viewing this situation as an Oedipal conflict, Erikson saw it as
Gandhi’s opportunity to work out conflict with authority figures—an opportunity
Gandhi was to have many times during his life.
Gandhi was born October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India. As a young man, he
studied law in London and was inconspicuous in manner and appearance. Then,
dressed like a proper British subject, he returned to India to practice law. After 2
years of unsuccessful practice, he went to South Africa, which, like India, was a
Chapter 9 Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory 265