Background
Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 15th, 1902. He grew up in Karlsruhe and attended a classical gymnasium, or high school, until he was 18. He shunned college, preferring a period of travel and contemplation. In 1928 he began psychoanalytic training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute, with Anna Freud as his analyst. Soon after graduating in 1933 he left for the United States. He started a psychoanalytic practice in Boston, began research at Harvard, later moved to Yale, and then to Berkeley, where he stayed for over a decade. In 1960 he was made a professor at Harvard, retiring in 1968. He died May 12, 1994, in Harwich, Mass.