Makale Özeti: Erikson’s Case of the Theological Student

This was a special case in which Erikson focused on a theological student who had a borderline disorder. This case is special for two reasons; 1. It gave Erikson self confidence to help and understand young adults, 2. By focusing on the patient’s religious experience did not mean he was turning away from Freud and his methods. The case study focused on an mysterious dream image that caused the borderline patient believe he was going insane, but when interpreted it led to a breakthrough in Erikson’s theory and later made the patient to recover from his sickness.
Erikson’s main target was an accumulation of six lectures presented in three continents, they all carried the same purpose, “the light thrown by clinical insight on the responsibilities which each generation has for all succeeding ones”. The second lecture, “The Nature of Clinical Evidence”, and the last one tackled the question, “How does a good clinician really work?” But he focused on a youngster, the patient with borderline disorder.
Erikson concentrates on a dream the patient reported in one of their psychoanalysis session. The patient explains that was “the most disturbing dream of his life” and added that it vividly recalled his “state of panic at the time of the ‘mental breakdown’ which had caused him to interrupt his studies for missionary work abroad and enter treatment.” Because the dream seemed painfully real when he awoke and the dream-state even now seems vivid enough to threaten his sense of reality, he was afraid that this was “the end of his sanity”.
Erikson interpreted the dream as something very meaningful and beneficial; the patient was reaching out for him with an important message and wanted Erikson to understand and answer him. Erikson concludes that the dream traces back to four periods in the patient’s life, and each period “left him with anger and fear over what he was to abandon rather than with the anticipation of greater freedom and more genuine identity”.


Referans:
Capps,D., (2009). Erikson’s Case of the Theological Student. Pastoral Psychol 58: 325–335

Makaleyi özetleyen: Thokozani K.M.Mbewe