Identity Lost
Erik was a TCK whose parents were Danish, but they separated before Erik was born. Erik was born near Frankfurt, Germany. Three years later his mother married Erik’s Jewish pediatrician but waited years before telling him that Dr. Homberger was not really his father. Erik considered himself German, even though his parents were Danish. However, German children rejected him because they considered him a Jew, and Jewish children rejected him because he was tall and blond.
Erik Homberger was an average student and graduated from what we would call a high school. Then he wandered around Europe for a year or so before trying an art school in Germany. After dropping out, he tried another one in Munich; then he moved to Florence, Italy. He wandered around Italy, soaking up the sun and visiting art galleries. Finally at the age of twenty-five, he settled down to work and study.
Erik experienced many of the factors that remove identity from adolescents in our modern western culture. He had little national identity (Danish or German), little community identity (constant moving around), little family identity (mother divorced and remarried), and little religious identity (Jewish or Christian). It is little wonder that Erik Erikson (his biological father’s name) was the one to develop the concept of the “identity crisis” during adolescence. He had experienced it himself.
Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 show how our culture did not create an identity for its teenagers as it created adolescence. The teens had no identity. It had never been created, but they kept looking for it—sometimes in the wrong places.