ABSTRACT
Erikson was a mediocre student, never earning a university degree of any kind. During his early 1920s he became a wanderer, studied briefly at art schools, painted children’s portraits, and struggled with psychological problems bordering between neurosis and psychosis. “I was an artist then, which can be a European euphemism for a young man with some talent, but
nowhere to go.” In the summer of 1927 he moved to Vienna, accepted a teaching position at a small school established for children of Freud’s patients and friends, and enjoyed a “truly astounding adoption by the Freudian circle” (Erikson, 1964, p. 20; 1975, p. 29). Erikson now undertook training in child psychoanalysis, including a personal analysis by Anna Freud at the unusually low rate of 7 dollars per month. He married Joan Serson on April 1, 1930, a successful and enduring union that produced two sons and a daughter.
