On January 15, 1995 colleagues and friends of the graceful and erudite scholar Erik Erikson gathered in San Francisco, a city he lived in and where he delivered, arguably, his finest clinical paper “The Dream Specimen of Psychoanalysis” (1954). The occasion was a symposium to honor the life and work of this tolerant and perceptive immigrant who delicately walked the line between the loyalist and rebel. His mission was to re-enchant humanity and restore faith to an often indifferent world. A master of the vignette and the telling detail, he wrote historical works that amplified and elucidated specific historical moments.