The Resourceful Self

Erik Erikson, best known for his life-cycle theory and concept of the identity crisis, proposed that we are comprised of a number of selves. In several earlier books, including At Home in the World, Donald Capps has suggested that the emotional separation of young children--especially boys--from their mothers results in the development of a melancholy self. In this book, Capps employs Erikson's assignment of an inherent strength to each stage of the life cycle and proposes that the life-enhancing strengths of the childhood years (hope, will, purpose, and competence) are central to the development of a resourceful self, and that this self counters the life-diminishing qualities of the melancholy self.

Focusing on Erikson's own writings, Capps identifies the four primordial resources that Erikson associates with childhood--humor, play, dreams, and hope--and shows how these resources assist children in confronting life's difficulties and challenges. Capps further suggests that the resourceful self that develops in childhood is central to Jesus' own vision of what we as adults may become if we follow the lead of little children.



""Capps offers the reader an in-depth and insightful study of how children develop resourceful selves that reflects his five-decades-long scholarly conversation with the works of Freud and Erikson. This work demonstrates Capps's own creative 'way of seeing things' and the artistry of a mature pastoral theologian.""
--Carol L. Schnabl Schweitzer, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA

""With unsurpassed precision and characteristic hope, Donald Capps coaxes from Erik Erikson's clinical essays on children and young people a battery of psychospiritual resources for countering threats of the melancholic self. The reader closes this book with renewed vigor, encouragement, and good cheer for facing the day.""
--Robert C. Dykstra, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ

""The deep struggles of being human are enticed to come out and play with hopeful possibilities that are as real and human as the struggles themselves. They are already there, deep within--in humor and hope, in dreams and play. Donald Capps journeys intimately with Freud and Erikson to reach beyond and discover the resourceful self.""
--Yolanda Dreyer, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa


Donald Capps is William Harte Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology (Emeritus) and Adjunct
Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author or editor of many books. His Cascade Books titles include Striking Out: The Religious Journey of Teenage Boys (2011); At Home in the World: Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Art (2013); Still Growing: The Creative Self in Older Adulthood (2014); and (coauthored with Nathan Carlin) Living in Limbo: Life in the Midst of Uncertainty (2010).