Early+Influences

=Early Influences=



When Erik finished gymnasium, he refused to go to medical school (as his stepfather wished) and abandoned home to enroll in Baden State Art School. A year later, he experimented with travel. Ultimately, he ended up in Vienna where, among other things, he painted children's portraits. A friend, Peter Blos, recommended that Erik expand on this by tutoring and teaching art at a school run by Dorothy Burlingham, a friend of [|Anna Freud], daughter and intellectual heir of the famed [|Sigmund Freud]. The Hietzing School, as it was called, was organized along psychoanalytic principles, and many of the students were the children of Freud's patients and friends. Seeing Erikson's skill with children, Anna Freud began mentoring him. (Note that he was actually still Erik Homburger at the time). His training, which included regular psychoanalytic sessions with Ms. Freud, resulted in a certificate from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. At the same time he attended classes at the University of Vienna, and also earned his teaching degree and a certificate in the Montessori method. He continued to teach, to become more involved in psychoanalysis. He also became married to Joan Serson a dance teacher at the Hietzing School. Eventually, economic pressures and the rise of the Nazis prompted the couple, which now had two sons, to move to Copenhagen, and then to the U.S. [Reference 1]