Identity's Architect is the first comprehensive biography of Erik Erikson, postwar America's most influential psychological thinker, who decisively reshaped our views of human development. Drawing on private materials and extensive interviews, award-winning historian Lawrence J. Friedman illuminates the relationship between Erikson's personal life and his groundbreaking notion of the life cycle and the identity crisis. A decade in the making, this book is indispensable for anyone who hopes to understand fully the life and intellectual legacy of one of the most significant figures of our time.

Lawrence J. Friedman is Professor of History at Indiana University and author of, among other books, Menninger: The Family and the Clinic.