ABSTRACT
Erik Homburger Erikson developed Freudian insights in an existential direction, but he did so from a more distant historical vantage point than his predecessors. Unlike the other romantic scientists, Erikson worried less about the problematic dualisms buried within psychoanalysis, wishing to extend its scope to consider historical and socio-cultural forces impacting on an individual life. Erikson’s European childhood and early adulthood actually contributed significantly to his perspective of the social character and cultural concerns of post-war America. Erikson admits his biographical interest in the film and is sympathetic to the Scandinavian connections between Kierkegaard’s brooding existentialism and the dark moods of Bergman’s films. Erikson argues that Isak’s ‘murdered’ selves need to be resurrected before he can hope to resolve these crises. The analytic framework of Young Man Luther fits within Erikson’s life-cycle model and is typical of his other psychohistories in exploring the effects of temporal and environmental change upon identity formation.
