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However jaded one may be with the plethora of psychological books, this one—a masterpiece of scientific writing—will prove fascinating to any psychoanalyst. Originating in the practice of psychoanalysis, its main chapters are based on 'specimen situations' which called for interpretation and correction: anxiety in young children, apathy among American Indians, the confusions of war veterans, arrogance in young Nazis. The emphasis is then shifted from these conditions, which blunt and distort the individual ego, to a study of the ego's roots in social organization. This, then, is a psychoanalytic book on the relation of the individual ego to society. The long period of childhood, which is characteristic of human development and which becomes longer as civilization progresses, permits man to achieve his unique intellectual and technical virtuosity, but it also leaves a lifelong threat of emotional immaturity in him.
Having stated his aims in the foreword, Erikson gives two case histories, one about a little boy at home, the other about a man in the Marines. This is followed by a discussion of the biological basis of psychoanalytic theory, Freud's 'timetable of libido development'. Erikson relates it to what we know about the ego and are beginning to learn about society, seeking the proper place of the libido theory in the totality of human life. He finds that Freud, the investigator, went beyond Freud, the doctor. It is meaningless to speak of the human child as if it were an animal in the process of domestication. Men's 'inborn instincts' are drive fragments to be assembled, to be given meaning, and to be organized during the prolonged childhood by methods of child training and schooling.
To trace the connection between childhood and society, Erikson turns to the study of children at play, introducing a timetable of stages of ego development, which mediates between physical stages and social institutions. Play, which is called 'the royal road to the study of