ABSTRACT
Reprinted by permission from Social Problems 9 (1962): 307-14. Copyright 1969 by The Society for the Study of Social Problems. Kai T. Erikson is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. The following selection sketches the theoretical orientation used in Wayward Puritans (Wiley, 1966), a historical and sociological study of deviance among the Massachusetts Bay Puritans in the 17th century, which won the 1967 Maclver Award of the American Sociological Association. In this book and other articles Erikson has contributed significantly to our knowledge of the processes by which society screens behavior and attributes deviance.
