Unit Nine Section Three Page 3

One of the best, most thoughtful psychological histories was written by the Neo-Freudian, Erik H. Erikson. In his path breaking biography, Young Man Luther, Erikson makes a very persuasive psychological profile that utilizes psychological theory. In particular, he discusses the idea of identity crisis for Martin Luther at the moment when he had actually graduated with an advanced degree. Martin had been troubled and when he was caught in a thunderstorm, apparently facing death from a thunderbolt, his whole life changed as he vowed to dedicate his life to the Church. Erikson succeeds in discussing both the familial and personal -based on both testimonies from Luther himself, histories and theorists. Below are a few excerpts from this synthetic work. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958). For the theory of Erik H. Erikson and the Neo Freudians, see Unit 5 Section 2.

I. Events of Martin's Youth (p. 24)

Born in 1483, Martin Luther	1483
entered the University of Erfurt at seventeen;	1501
received his master's degree at twenty-one, and entered the monastery, having vowed to do so during a thunderstorm	1505
Became a priest and celebrated his first mass at the age of twenty-three; then fell into severe doubts and scruples which may have caused the "fit in the choir."	1507+
Became a doctor of theology at the age of twenty-eight; gave his first lectures on the Psalms at the University of Wittenberg, where he experienced the "revelation in the tower."	1512+
At thirty-two, almost a decade after the episode in the choir, he nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door in Wittenberg.	1517

II. On the conversion of the thunderstorm and its significance in terms of a youth identity crisis, Erikson writes (pp.40-48):

"Youth can be the most exuberant, the most careless, the most self-sure, and the most unselfconsciously productive stage of life, or so it seems if we look primarily at the 'once-born.' This is a term which William James adopted from Cardinal Newman; he uses it to describe all those who rather painlessly fit themselves are are fitted into the ideology of their age, finding no discrepancy between its formulation of past and future and the daily tasks set by the dominant technology. . . .

We call what young people in their teens and early twenties look for in religion and in other dogmatic systems an ideology. . . . .These constructive and destructive aspects of youthful energy have been and are employed in making and remaking tradition in many diverse areas. Youth stands between the past and the future, both in individual life and in society; it also stands between alternate ways of life. . . . In its search for that combination of freedom and discipline, of adventure and tradition, which suits its state, youth may exploit (and be exploited by) the most varied devotions. . . . .In Luther's time the monastery was, at least for some, one possible psychosocial moratorium, one possible way of postponing the decision as to what one is and is going to be. . . .

We will therefore concentrate on this process: how young Martin, at the end of a somber and harsh childhood, was precipitated into a severe identity crisis for which he sought delay and cure in the silence of the monastery; how being silent, he became 'possessed'; how being possessed, he gradually learned to speak a new language, his language; how being able to speak, he not only talked himself out of the monastery, and much of his country out of the Roman Church, but also formulated for himself and for all of mankind a new kind of ethical and psychological awareness: and how, at the end, this awareness, too, was marred by a return of the demons, whoever they may have been."