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The essay investigates how the Danish-American psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson first operationalised psychoanalytic thought in historiography, which in turn contributed to the birth of the interdiscipline "psychohistory". I will attempt to show that Erikson's use of psychoanalytic theory rested heavily on his clinical work, and more specifically on his theory of "identity" and "identity crisis". As such, it is an example of one author welding together two academic discourses – psychoanalysis and academic historiography – to suit his particular theoretical needs at a specific point in time, which in turn sparked the creation of an interdiscipline, "psychohistory".