Article
Erik Erikson at 120: Social Approach to Mental Health Proves Enduring
A news article by John Zollinger, published by the Austen Riggs Center on 15 June 2022 to mark the 120th anniversary of Erik H. Erikson's birth. It argues that Erikson's attention to both the social and the psychological influences on mental health remains relevant now that the field is turning to the social determinants of mental health, to access to care and to more diverse populations. It recalls Childhood and Society (1950), with its eight stages of development across the whole of life, and Erikson's years at Riggs, on the staff from 1951 to 1960 and as a consultant until 1973, when his view that people both shape and are shaped by their surroundings became a central organising idea of the institution. Three Riggs clinicians comment on his legacy. Jane Tillman, director of the Erikson Institute founded in his name in 1994, notes that where Freud saw development as ending at puberty, Erikson extended it through the whole of life, an idea she holds to be still vital though it has since been challenged and revised. Eric M. Plakun, the center's medical director, sees his influence in today's recognition of the social determinants of mental health. Stephen Schlein, a Riggs Fellow who studied with him in 1971–1973, describes his interpersonal and relational way of working, the subject of Schlein's book The Clinical Erik Erikson. The article also describes current Riggs programmes that it ties to these values, the Activities Program and nursery school founded by Joan Erikson, and the Erikson collections held in the Riggs archives.
Main ideas
- Erikson's joint attention to social and psychological influences on mental health is presented as newly relevant, as the field turns to the social determinants of mental health, access to care and more diverse populations.
- Childhood and Society (1950) set out eight stages of development across the whole of life, shaped by biological, psychological and social factors.
- At the Austen Riggs Center, where he was on the staff from 1951 to 1960 and a consultant until 1973, Erikson's view that people both shape and are shaped by their surroundings, with identity arising from individual psychology, experience and social context, became a central organising idea.
- According to Jane Tillman, Erikson departed from Freud's view that development ends at puberty by holding that it continues throughout life; though since challenged and revised, the idea of lifelong development and of conflict resolved within relationships remains vital.
- Eric M. Plakun sees Erikson's legacy in the present recognition of the social determinants of mental health, including by the American Psychiatric Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the World Health Organization.
- Stephen Schlein, who studied with Erikson as a Riggs Fellow in 1971–1973, describes him as ahead of his time in an interpersonal and relational orientation, the subject of Schlein's book The Clinical Erik Erikson.
- Joan Erikson founded the center's Activities Program, in which non-clinician artisans and teachers work with patients, and its on-campus nursery school, where patients serve as teacher's aides; both remain central to the Riggs community.