Erik H. Erikson

Young Man Luther

In this classic psychobiography, Erik H. Erikson brings his renowned insights on human development and the identity crisis to bear on the mighty figure of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther.

"The most successful of all efforts to connect psychoanalytic knowledge to an understanding of how history unfolds, and how religious thought develops, changes. Erikson is a brilliant, subtle, and wonderfully knowing narrator who offers not only a convincing biographical portrait of an important historical moment, but a marvelously suggestive repository of wisdom about youth, its opportunities and challenges."—Robert Coles

"A very profound study. . . . For people who are not shocked by an analysis of the traditional pieties, which is however without malice or negative or polemic interest, the book will be very revealing."—Reinhold Neibuhr

"Enormously rich, instructive and fascinating. . . . Recommended reading for all behavioral scientists and theologians."—Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

"Extraordinarily stimulating. . . . An extremely valuable contribution."—American Sociological Review