ABSTRACT
Erik H. Erikson's personality is free from bombast and he has a natural humility which makes him the right person to attempt to apply psycho-analytic findings. Erikson's main theme is that studies of societies seldom give proper place to infancy and childhood patterns: "a blind spot in the makers and interpreters of history: they ignore the fateful function of childhood in the fabric of society." Every individual has been an infant and a child and brings to the social picture the drives, anxieties and mental defences that belong to every growing human being. Local societies, in the pattern of their attitude to their young, mobilise these drives, anxieties and defences to adapt their children to become not just adults, but adults in their specific community. There is a feedback into psycho-analysis. As an analyst one may not feel that Erikson's statement of psycho-analytic metapsychology is acceptable in all details.
