It takes a great man to write a book about a great man and both the author and his subject fit this description. Erikson has previously written Childhood and Society and Identity: Youth and Crisis, both of which brought fresh insights into the stagnant areas of childhood and adolescence. His volume entitled Young Man Luther is a fascinating psychohistorical inquiry. The author is not only a psychoanalyst, but also an educator, a social scientist, and a poetic writer. I would place a man combining these attributes as a distinguished humanist, a fitting person to understand Gandhi and interpret him to the world as no biographer has previously done.
In 1962 Erikson was invited to lead a seminar in Ahmedabad, India, the place of Gandhi's first strike on behalf of the millworkers where, in fact, he tested out strategies and tactics later to be applied