Erik H. Erikson and the deep context of ministry

Erikson’s developmental pattern

While not specifically contemplating ministry, Erikson was the 20th-century theorist who most helpfully “joined the border at which psychology meets theology.” ² His curiosity about the ways humans develop and become adults within a society led him to conceptualize a stage theory of human growth. That theory begins with personal awareness—“each person is a center of awareness in a universe of communicable experiences, a center so numinous that it amounts to a sense of being alive, and more, of being the vital condition of existence.” ³ Numinous is a word carefully chosen by Erikson. He describes the center of who “I” am as numinous light, a radiant core conveying “a luminosity of awareness.” ⁴ This radiant core is inborn, yet as the “I” develops, Erikson recognized the importance of intergenerationally communicated social mores and the issues associated with a person’s contextual and personal location.

The term “psychosocial” is often used to describe Erikson’s work. This sense of the psychosocial involves biology, psychology, and the social sciences in a comingling perspective; for Erikson, one without the other two would be incomplete. Thus body, mind, and the societal context form the dynamic convergence of a person’s becoming; that is, their psychosocial development. These three meet a newborn within the intimate mother–child relationship. It is within this context that a child begins to experience how much (or how little) “I” am able to trust (or mistrust) my worldly context.

This psychosocial convergence continues through seven more stages that frame the emergence of the “I” over time. For Erikson, four stages occur during childhood and three in adulthood with a centering one during adolescence (identity against identity confusion). ⁵ Polar opposites frame the end points on continuums where individuals entering such developmental time frames (stages) struggle to locate themselves. Such locations are not either-or in nature, but more complex. For example, no one completely embraces the first stage’s trust pole without mixing in a sizeable amount of mistrust. Such resolutions are accompanied by a necessary abandonment or a reworking of previously held and possibly cherished practices. For growth to occur, each individual must come to terms with this fact.

The word “crisis” suggests an inherent conflict, one that everyone undergoes and that is activated by entry into each stage or time frame. According to Erikson, the negotiation of a crisis results in the acquiring of virtues that become the building blocks of who “I” am; that is, my developing identity. The virtues of childhood he named as hope, will, purpose, and competence. Those of adulthood he called love, care, and wisdom. The fifth or the adolescence stage’s virtue he understood as being fidelity (faithfulness). They depend and build upon one another—the eight virtues are deeply interconnected.

As used by Erikson, the word “virtue” suggests an inherent strength, and he describes “virtue” and “spirit” as interchangeable terms, thus suggesting that the active presence of an acquired virtue has a “spirited” quality. Erikson “was concerned that the portions of the Western world which had abandoned God, soul, theology, and vitalizing qualities of the spirit had evicted the essential marrow of a complete being.” ⁶

What such a unity or wholeness of “a complete being” means within ministry, and the deep context that must be recognized as the location of such ministry, is the focus of this article.

Epigenesis

Erikson called the eight stages an “epigenetic pattern”; that is, a prevailing, inherent, developmental order (new stages building on previous ones and leaning toward those that lie ahead). In each stage conflictual choices are presented to and made by every human. Since Erikson holds that this is a biological given and the experiential negotiation of each step’s crisis is also the essence—the building blocks—of what it means to be fully human, he opens himself to those who want to align him within a rigid, linear understanding. While Erikson is clearly deeply rooted by the Freudian and biological assumptions of his day, his artistic temperament has interpreted his stage theory as not so much a rigid ladder that is to be obeyed, but instead a broad-brushed, artistic depiction of what life most propitiously offers us at certain critical developmental choice points.

For example, Erikson describes the process of adolescence as having all of life’s previous stages reopened, examined, and newly incorporated into the “I” of the self that has begun to center an individual into a newly realized identity. At the same time, this adolescent occasion of review also looks ahead, contemplating those stages yet to come in a more aware fashion than was once available during childhood. These future crises remain cloudy; nevertheless, by assembling the virtues past and future, a stronger sense of personal agency emerges as “I” determine to “whom” or to “what” I will pledge my faith (the adolescent virtue of fidelity). Fidelity has to do with a self-aware ideological connection involving who “I” am and my (positive or negative) connection within society. The positive resolution of this fifth or adolescent stage Erikson names as identity, but the absence of such resolution and direction as described above can result in identity confusion.

The mature adult and ideology

Erikson suggested that old age (his eighth stage) is a second occasion during which one most propitiously recalibrates identity. This process, framed by the polarities of integrity vs. disgust and despair, can result in the attainment of the virtue of wisdom. While identity is under consideration within every one of the eight developmental stages, such a major reconsideration (a second identity) is at the core of this stage’s crisis.

Here all the previous virtues—hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, and care—are recalibrated, altering the understandings that (once) comprised my adolescent identity. The truth “I” adhered to following that earlier identity will have been changed by the experience of adult existence. So, too, the core of the ideology “I” once honored through the important virtue of fidelity (“faith”) quite possibly no longer exactly “fits” who “I” have now become and what I hold as important.

Erikson suggests the resolution of these ideological postures and a person’s arrival at a positive second identity are generated by a renewed embrace of basic trust, an assessment of the lived experience carried from previous stages, and a deeper understanding of what truly matters in life. This suggests the virtue of wisdom, a life perspective that can prepare a person for facing death without dread. For Erikson, such a posture moves someone beyond personal ideology, readying them (by deep trust within a universal interconnectedness) for whatever comes next (including death and the mystery of what lies beyond).

Erikson’s journey: A brief sketch

Erikson discovered his vocation as a child psychoanalyst while teaching in a small school in Vienna that was formed to educate the children of Sigmund and Anna Freud’s patients. Peter Blos, a childhood friend connected with this school who later became famous for his work with youth, knew that Erikson was not as successful in his role as artist as he had hoped, so invited him to come and teach. Erikson went to Vienna and discovered that he worked well with children. After completing training with Anna Freud, Erikson received a certificate from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society naming him a child psychoanalyst. He then received membership in the International Psycho-Analytical Association.

As Hitler was ascending to the role of Chancellor, in 1933 Erikson and wife Joan with their two children traveled to Denmark seeking work. When Erikson was unable to secure a work permit, the family immigrated to the United States. Joan’s mother helped them relocate to Boston, where a chance meeting with a friendly psychoanalyst led to an initial position involving the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Joan (a Canadian) took care of their two children while helping Erik with his new language. Erikson pasted together occasional talks at colleges, private work as a psychoanalyst, and presentations at professional meetings. His English improved through the work he did with Joan in preparation for such occasions. He also found himself learning the customs of his new homeland while steadily improving his language skills through work with patients and interdisciplinary discussions held in Boston.

Through these early years he worked at The Judge Baker Clinic in Boston and served as a consultant at Harvard and Yale as well as at the Menninger Clinic. In 1937 he investigated the plight of the Oglala Sioux children in the Dakotas with Scudder MeKeel, then a Field Representative for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Moving to California in 1939, he worked in a faculty position at Berkeley, maintained a healthy private practice, and became engaged with the problems of World War II veterans. In that same year he received citizenship. In 1942 he worked with Alfred Kroeber regarding the plight of the Yurok in California. By 1957 he was back east at the Austen Riggs Center.

These and other experiences coalesced into an understanding of the historic actualities impacting a child within society while moving Erikson into a more positive theoretical analysis that both challenged and augmented Freud’s analytical principles. With the publication of Childhood and Society came acclaim and the eventual invitation in 1960 to serve on the faculty at Harvard University.

The psychoanalyst as healer

Erikson saw the role of the psychoanalyst as one who healed, or worked to “make whole” not just those who individually came to him seeking help, but also the society within which he practiced his profession. In his book Insight and Responsibility, ⁷ he stated that the awareness of such issues (insight) necessarily led to a person’s stepping forward at some risk while taking appropriate responsibility. In his eyes, such action need not be big or splashy, but instead should be more the stuff of everyday work and engagement.

Earlier, in Childhood and Society, Erikson stated that an objective psychoanalytic role was not adequate to the ethical concerns of the day. He charged colleagues to abandon self-absorption and turn to a more compassionate awareness regarding the vulnerable among us. As a healer, Erikson suggested that psychoanalysts should be in partnerships with those seeking personal insight, as well as avoiding autocratic pronouncements about what must be done by their “patients.”

Such ideas resulted in part from Erikson’s crossing disciplinary boundaries, venturing beyond the discipline of psychoanalysis into what would become life-long connective work with sociology, history, anthropology, and theology. He knew that such disciplines guarded their boundaries, defending and refining their practices. He also knew they (often) looked with displeasure at those who violated such concerns. Nevertheless, Erikson saw possible junctions for his work with such bodies of knowledge and was willing to step outside the boundaries of his own discipline while moving ahead with interdisciplinary work.

An intellectual maverick, Erikson wrote vivid psycho-historical portraits of Martin Luther (Young Man Luther) ⁸ and Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi’s Truth). ⁹ What was key to Erikson’s interest in and understanding of both men was his belief that they had changed what was humanly possible within a society’s context. Others agreed, and, following Gandhi’s Truth, Erikson received the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction as well as the National Book Award in philosophy and religion. Many touted him as a wise sage, an ethical force to be reckoned with, and a societal leader. Still more awards followed, and in 1973 he was asked by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to do the Jefferson Lecture, a major honor and responsibility. This marked him as a public intellectual, yet his often (liberal) viewpoints regarding his adopted country’s various wars and politicians raised numerous eyebrows.

For some critics, however, his blending of history within the psychoanalytic discipline (Luther and Gandhi) was clearly an aberration. When late in life he determined to focus his remaining years on the Galilean sayings of Jesus, some felt he had betrayed his vocation while others saw what he was doing as evidence of senility.

The Galilean sayings of Jesus

Concerns about religion are evident in Erikson’s work, and he came to study the early sayings of Jesus because they seemed, given Norman Perrin’s book, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, ¹⁰ not to have been encumbered by later institutional additions. Perrin applied methods of critical textual analysis to dig through emendations added by later authors and communities. By so doing, Perrin suggested that the early Galilean sayings of Jesus revealed the truth as to who Jesus was and what he had believed.

In reading Perrin, Erikson saw how the early church and those believers who followed Jesus in later years augmented the biblical record in accord with the needs of their day. For Erikson, such additions did not necessarily undermine the faithful stance of believers, but did erode any literal or rigidly inerrant posture regarding what more honestly should be understood as an ongoing recording of how people amplified Jesus’ earliest sayings. Erikson was not so much interested in these textual arguments as he was fascinated by the possibility of understanding how the meaning of the human Jesus had changed the trajectory of the world.

Erikson’s essay on “The Galilean Sayings of Jesus and the Sense of ‘I’” summarized Perrin’s work, Jesus’ context, and the ethical promise Erikson felt Jesus held in his cultural moment and for those who came to follow him. Particularly intrigued with certain stories of Jesus deemed authentic by Perrin, Erikson suggested that Jesus’ “authentic” Galilean message was two-fold: that humanity is one universal species; and that by truly hearing and responding to Jesus’ words, a person could discover an inner, numinous core, hopefully connected to something much greater than a personal “I.”

It is clear that in this essay, Erikson came close to abandoning the orthodox psychoanalytic understanding that any reference to God is just a human projection. Erikson proposed that Jesus’ sayings at Galilee recapitulated the deep, trusting connection initially found through the relationship of infant and mother. The mother–child relationship for Erikson established the model for all relationships, including the human–divine connection. Erikson therefore suggested that a mature person hearing and responding to the deeper text of Jesus’ sayings might not only find the mother–child relationship rekindled, but discover that it rests within a deepened, richer, more comprehensive ideology.

These possibilities—a faithful “second identity” connected beyond oneself, within a trusting, hopeful, universal, and transcendent vision for humanity—formed for Erikson the core of why Jesus’ life and sayings were responded to with fidelity and changed the world. Here Erikson worked at effectively tying together what a person interested in religion might suggest are the religious concerns of the first, fifth, and eighth stages.

With these thoughts in mind, Erikson felt Jesus was an “event central to our Judaeo-Christian heritage and a step in human comprehension and self-awareness which is by no means fully expressed in, or restricted to, its ecclesiastical fate.” ¹¹

But was he a Christian believer?

As a child Erikson was a blond, blue-eyed boy in a Jewish home. Biographer Lawrence J. Friedman suggests that “Erik stayed away from the synagogue as much as he could. Tall, blond, and blue-eyed in a congregation where many were short and dark . . . he continued to sense that he was different.” ¹² He often was referred to as “goy” (gentile) in the synagogue and as a “Jew” in school. ¹³ His rabbi suggested “that he was aloof from everything and everybody” Jewish, while at the same time Erikson noted that “at that point I set out to be different.” ¹⁴ Such reflections speak to his later theoretical focus on identity and intergenerational relationships, as well as his continued interest in theology and things religious.

Early on, because of his Jewish mother’s interest in authors like Kierkegaard and the role played by his Jewish stepfather in the synagogue and his boyhood town of Karlsruhe, Erikson had a nascent sense of what Jesus might mean for a contemporary believer. As a young man he once sat at mealtime with a friend whose father prayed the Lord’s Prayer as a grace, and he had been moved. Years later, walking by the Sea of Galilee with his wife Joan, he was again moved—but on both occasions he was not moved as a believer.

In all of Erikson’s psycho-historical work, including his essay on the sayings of Jesus, it seems clear that he was always trying to discover how certain humans had transcended their contexts and were able to ethically change this stubborn world. He held an unquenchable optimism, a spirited and hopeful posture that believed the world could evolve into a place filled with people who cared about each other.

He kept himself at some distance from organized religion. Some might wish to claim him as “Christian,” and while he might on occasion attend church with his wife, Joan (a life-long Episcopalian), he never pronounced himself to be a believer. Joan referred to him as an “apprentice Christian,” a phrase he used when answering a question as to his belief once put to him by a Colorado church member. ¹⁵ His personal, professional claim always remained that he was a psychoanalyst within the Judeo-Christian orbit.

This was the historic and cultural conundrum he saw—Jesus opened people to a fuller life and a transformative connection with the world, but today the often habituated routines and negative practices of the institutional church were instrumental in narrowing the ways humans viewed their social context. Such narrowing too easily was capable of deteriorating into what he referred to as the “-isms”—ritualism, moralism, literalism, ceremonialism, legalism, perfectionism, authoritarianism, absolutism, and dogmatism. He watched church denominations devour their kin even as he hoped for an “evolved” human species such as the one Jesus spoke of in his Galilean sayings. Nevertheless, despite such “-isms” and a deeply held dismay with the way the church presented Jesus, Erikson continued to hold that adults in a society could do better were they to simply move beyond what he saw as inadequate moral behavior.

The societal roots of moral and ethical behavior

Erikson saw how “I,” “we,” and “they” were built through childhood relationships into systems that either expanded or narrowed human possibilities. For him, it was clear that the child incorporates a set of moral codes and values as to how “we” are going to interact with “our” world. Such codes come to the child in homey fashion—the rituals of feeding, touching, sleeping, and interacting with others are taken in by the child so that by adulthood they become subconscious ways of being human within “our” society.

The narrow morality of family, tribe, and nation is strong. The “I” shaped by such moralities is well defended. But by adolescence the crisis of fidelity involves a recalibration of such codes. Generational influences and personal experiences upset what once seemed set in stone. For Erikson, a more hopeful “pledging of one’s truth” in a positive formation of adolescent identity could mark a healthy forward progression for humankind, while a negative adolescent positioning (an affirmation of only “our” tribe and “our way”) would indicate a backward step into the many narrow calcifications he called “pseudospeciations”.

He saw the risk of stepping away from moralistic childhood understandings into the often gray area of adult ethical decision-making as part of a hopeful, evolutionary, developmental process. But in this regard, his psychoanalytic work also suggested an interior look might be profitable. According to Erikson’s biographer, Lawrence J. Friedman, Erikson advised members at a plenary session of the American Psychiatric Association (1984) to recognize that “understanding the otherness in ourselves is the best counter to the pseudospeciations that heighten international conflict in a nuclear age.” ¹⁶ But while making this suggestion Erikson also lamented his observation that all too often the ethical adult failed to emerge from adolescence into adulthood. Without encouragement from older generations, he saw that many adolescents unfortunately remained fixed within childhood moralities. For Erikson, ethical adults holding life-affirming values that challenged the childhood core of the emerging adolescent “I” were indispensable for healthy adolescent development. In this regard, a current evaluator of his work suggests that we ought to “hang on to the basic principles and convictions regarding the dialectical interplay of the generations that underlies his best work.” ¹⁷

That work, then and now, was largely ignored. Often researchers are more concerned about individuals rather than an individual’s intergenerational context. He thought this was the natural outcome of the highly individualistic nature of this society. But given his deep concern regarding the needed presence and role of ethical adults, Erikson hoped that in the future the chosen unit of observation for the scientist would be generational instead of remaining centered on the individual.

But what might Erikson’s concern about the active intergenerational role of ethical adults across the life span mean for ministry today?

The confirmatory role of adults with youth

Three-generational churches often are composed of searching youth, ethical adults, and wise elders. Pastoral leadership that sees some usefulness from the work of Erikson might confirm and encourage intergenerational patterns wherein all participate in the practices that form a particular church’s tradition. Not that children and youth need to participate in every practice, but an incarnational ministry at its core is relational. Through such embodiment, not only do elders know the names of children and youth, they also share connections, marking them as brother and sister members of the body of Christ.

Were we to take seriously Erikson’s insights, a church would have to put into place intergenerational ministries of consequence where children, youth, and adults participate appropriate to their interests and competencies.

Two congregations come to mind in this regard—both understand worship to be their centering practice. The first congregation regularly engages youth in worship leadership, encouraging youth to “bring God’s word” in sermon form every fifth week. The pastor invites several older adults who help youth throughout this process. A second congregation holds a “by Invitation” intergenerational four-week Bible study of no more than twelve adult and youth participants with their pastor. This study deeply informs the pastor’s next sermon delivery. Both churches are careful in their invitations to underscore the congregational understanding that such intergenerational liturgical work (liturgy = “the people’s work”) is an important load-bearing framework for their regular worship celebration. Both of these intentional frameworks speak volumes as to the confirmatory role that can be played by ethical adults within the church.

In a similar vein, I have also observed churches whose confirmed youth (several high school juniors and seniors) worked as peer ministers with adult church member volunteers in charge of a church’s confirmation program. Peer in this instance meant two adults and five youth, along with the minister, being focused on a common task (youth confirmation). These peer ministers met each Thursday evening to complete Sunday’s plans for confirmand involvement. They were installed and charged during a fall Sunday morning worship service. The minister saw the two groups—both the staff and the confirmation group—as critical building blocks of the church’s overall ministerial process. The positive generational interaction that resulted was a learning experience for all those involved in this ministry, and the mutuality growing from this course of action worked so well that youth were also partnered with core adult members for leadership with the church’s adult new-member orientation. Eventually, youth came to serve with adults in several other church ministries.

Of sadness to me have been the churches I have observed where the minister alone holds a confirmation class centered on the distribution and reception of informational data. Youth who graduate from such classes tend to opt out of the church. Erikson might be concerned at the general lack of generational contact in this and other youth “programs.” He might also raise concerns as to some of the “-isms” that might be involved in pastoral or governing board rhetoric and the societal mores of churches that effectively remove youth from “adult” worship, thus winning a silence in which adults sit unbothered by the noise or activity that might accompany the presence of children and youth. But what is lost through this practice are those children and youth who have not been introduced or connected within a church’s celebration and responsive ministries of what adults say that they prize most—their connection with God.

Erikson would suggest that rituals arising within generationally active communities often provide positive occasions that involved youth draw on for their defining of identity. But fidelity is not necessarily something only tied to church membership. Erikson defined fidelity as “the ability to sustain loyalties freely pledged in spite of the inevitable contradictions of value systems.” ¹⁸ There are many ideologies or voices of promise (kerygmas) vying for allegiance in the adolescent world. The crisis of adolescence involves an intense sorting out process during which some things are kept and others dismissed. Adults should not be surprised at the difficulty of this sorting out process.

There are words like pilgrimage and discernment that might partner well with Erikson’s ideas. For example, were a church to regularly partner adults and youth on pilgrimage into consequential contexts (work camps, medical missions, holy locations), both adults and youth might step away from their normal concerns and move into a time of discernment as to what truly matters in a life well-lived. On such occasions life is opened up instead of being closed down. Life then becomes a dive into a deep wellspring that is forming us, and then swimming up to the light becomes a new thing, even as the hue and colors of the waters within which we swim are changed.