Identity, Youth and Crisis, written in 1968, is one of the most important works on the psychology of adolescence in the twentieth century. It aims to synthesize the individualistic methodology of Freudian psychoanalysis with the other social sciences. Erik Erikson (1902-1994), the author and a Danish-German-American psychologist was one of the most significant theorists in human psychology of his day. In 1950, he rose to prominence as a result of his book, Childhood and Society, a central text in the study of child development. Identity, Youth and Crisis follows eighteen years later; but at a theoretical level, it picks up where Childhood and Society left off.