“Hey look it’s Erik Erikson!”

“Wait, isn’t Erik Erikson a famous psychologist?”

“Yeah, I think so”

“Oh my god, what is he doing on FOX? Wait…”

Location Overheard: Pollock Dining Commons

In my senior year of high school, I took a semester-long introductory psychology course which pretty must just grazed over the major concepts of psychology and the famous psychologists within the field of study. It was pretty much a crash course of all things the human mind. So, along with Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov, Erik Erikson was a pretty prominent figure.

Both of my godparents are psychologists at a college in Upstate New York called SUNY Cortland. In fact, my godmother just recently told me that when she would look after me when I was younger, I was often the subject of several benign psychological childhood development experiments. She would then use her experimental findings as examples in her Psychology 101 course. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure nothing major ever happened, at least not that I am aware of. Psychologically, thus far, I am pretty sure I am doing just fine. So, following the lead of Pavlov and his dogs, my godmother experimented with classical conditioning—such as taking a toy that I was initially scared to play with because of its loud noises and having me play with it until she had conditioned me to be unafraid of the thing. Anyway, moral of the story is that I knew who Erik Erikson was, but clearly, these two Penn State students were a little hazy on the subject, and when I heard that Erik Erikson was currently on Fox News, it more than just caught my attention.

Crash Course Erik Erikson Style

In case you’re not one of the thousand psychology majors here at Penn State, Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. The man was best known for his eight stages of psychosocial development from infancy to adulthood. I won’t bore you with much detail, but here they are:

Now that you hopefully know who Erikson was, let’s transition back to the conversation above that took place at Pollock Commons one evening about a week ago. Who the girl had seen on FOX was, in fact, Erick Erickson. However, it wasn’t the Erik Erikson that she later realized she thought to be the long deceased, world-renowned psychologist. It was actually this man:

For some reason, seeing this man, with the name Erick Erickson plastered below his picture really just made her question whether or not the psychologist was back from the dead, discussing matters on FOX News. The slight difference in the spelling of these two individuals’ names is actually quite misleading as there is a drastic difference between them. This particular Erickson is a conservative American blogger and radio host.

After contemplating what she saw and what she had just said, it was moments later that this Penn State student realized that the individual displayed on the television, engaged in a heated political debate, was not actually Erik Erikson the psychologist. However, I am pleased to say that she soon recognized her mistake and we all shared a good laugh.