Identity: Youth and Crisis

“Everybody has heard of ‘identity crisis’ and it arouses a mixture of curiosity, mirth, and discomfort.”

Erikson bemoans the popularization of a phrase he coined, the “identity crisis.” It has been taken over by the media in headlines such as “The Identity Crisis of Africa.” On the other hand, it has been so overused that the word “crisis” in the phrase no longer means a catastrophe but, as he intended, a turning point that must be passed for an individual to move on to their next developmental stage.

“Thus we have learned to ascribe a normative ‘identity crisis’ to the age of adolescence and young adulthood.”

Erikson frequently pairs the word “normative” with “identity crisis.” His point is to stress that the crisis is a perfectly normal part of adolescence. All young people must pass through the identity crisis in this stage that is brought about by the interaction of social, intellectual/emotional, and genital maturation and the roles offered to the individual by society.

“The whole interplay between the psychological and the social, the developmental and the historical, for which identity formation is of prototypal significance, could be conceptualized only as a kind of psychosocial relativity.”

The concept of psychosocial relativity, first introduced in this quotation, is key to Erikson’s theory of how ego identity develops: through the processes of social interaction. This is true at every stage of development and involves changes both at the level of one’s community, including gender, class, nationality, ethnic group, and religion, and within the greater historical era in which one lives.

“In the traditional case history […] the patient’s residence, ethnic background, and occupation are the first items to be radically altered when it is necessary to disguise his personal identity.”

Erikson argues that traditional psychoanalysis has ignored factors such as ethnic groups, historical eras, and economic pursuits, all of which impart to an individual a sense of good and evil. These factors present social models that will help to shape personality development, particularly for the adolescent, yet traditional psychoanalysis has hardly begun to take these factors into account. It is as if factors that lie close to the “surface” of the individual can have no impact on their emotional health.

“Freud’s original formulations concerning the ego and its relation to society necessarily depended on the general state of psychoanalytic theory at the time and on the sociological formulations of his era.”

This is one of several places in the collected essays where Erikson treats Freudian theory with respect and restraint, even though much of the text is devoted to delineating the ways in which his theory departs from Freud. His seeming ambivalence toward his predecessor can be addressed by the fact that Erikson saw psychoanalysis itself as, by necessity, constantly changing. His own work is part of an ongoing process that began with Freud and will continue to evolve.

“Crew and captain establish a symbiosis not governed by official regulations alone.”

Erikson has observed firsthand the morale of men in submarines during wartime. For the men to be able to withstand monotony and yet be constantly prepared for action, they must work together in an interdependent relationship. Erikson doesn’t believe traditional psychiatric discussions could explain the choices the men make. He attributes the smooth relationship between captain and crew to the fact that the egos of the individuals involved are working in harmony with the social organization.

“Whenever we try to understand growth, it is well to remember the epigenetic principle which is derived from the growth of organisms in utero.”

Chapter 3 adds a new dimension to Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development by introducing the epigenetic principle: Children don’t just happen to grow in predictable stages, each with its own turning point, in relation to their social environment. Rather, they are programmed to develop in these stages. Those “inner laws” actually create the social interactions needed for the personality to develop in a healthy way, with an ever-widening radius of significant individuals and institutions.

“For again, the pathological consequences of this stage may not show until much later, when conflicts over initiative may find expression in hysterical denial or in a self-restriction which keeps an individual from living up to his inner capacities.”

Erikson is describing what happens when preschoolers in Stage 3, the Preschool or Play Age period, fail to resolve feelings of inhibition and guilt to take initiative in play and social interactions with others. Although the focus of the book is Stage 5, Adolescence, teens must successfully reach that stage, “graduating” from the stages of childhood, to overcome the “crisis” or turning point that occurs in the teen years.

“For indeed, in the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”

This often-cited quote distills Erikson’s passion for the topic of identity. Through his work as a child psychoanalyst, he aims to help young people who are trapped by identity confusion (the inability to fit their identity to a role in society) or negative identity (disdain for traditional roles) to feel more alive and more at home in the world. He feels that America, in particular, forces on adolescents a set of standardized models to which they must conform, especially with regard to finding an occupation.

“This period can be viewed as a psychosocial moratorium during which the young adult through free role experimentation may find a niche in some section of his society.”

In adolescence, individuals must muster their emotional, intellectual, and sexual growth to make adult choices and decisions. However, one young person may vary greatly from another in successfully resolving the crisis of adolescence. The psychosocial moratorium offers the young person a chance to delay adult commitments and experiment with different roles. Erikson mentions apprenticeships and adventures as opportunities for experimentation that align with social values. Psychiatric treatment that helps an adolescent resolve emotional issues is another kind of moratorium. The concept of a “gap year” would be a modern example.

“The community supports such development to the extent that it permits the child, at each step, to orient himself toward a complete ‘life plan’ with a hierarchical order of roles as represented by individuals of different ages.”

Erikson believes that family, neighborhood, and school provide opportunities for developing children to interact and identify with younger and older children and young and old adults. The series of identifications the child makes with these people in the immediate surrounding become part of the child’s identity. The final one, which is fixed at the end of adolescence, includes the prior identifications but also changes them to make a unique and whole personality.

“From a genetic point of view, then, the process of identity formation emerges as an evolving configuration—a configuration which is gradually established by successive ego syntheses and resyntheses throughout childhood.”

Eriksen believes that the ego’s job is one of synthesis, bridging the disconnects between various levels of personality development. The fact that the child is growing provides the energy needed to cope with each new phase, and society in turn provides opportunities for growth and maturation. Personality development is thus an “evolving configuration” that, through the work of the ego, integrates factors such as sexual needs, accomplishments, identifications, and roles.

“Whether or not a given adolescent’s newly acquired capacities are drawn back into infantile conflict depends to a significant extent on the quality of the opportunities and rewards available to him in his peer clique as well as on the more formal ways in which society at large invites a transition from social play to work experimentation and from rituals of transit to final commitments, all of which must be based on an implicit mutual contract between the individual and society.”

The concept of the “mutual contract” between the individual and society is at the heart of Erikson’s psychosocial theory of personality development. On the one hand, society can offer negative conditions to underprivileged or marginalized young people, which stunt their emotional development and can push them into undesirable groups and activities. On the other hand, a healthy society offers an ideology that benefits young people by providing opportunities to experiment with new roles and to successfully journey into adulthood.

“On the whole, however, our patients’ conflicts find expression in a more subtle way than the abrogation of personal identity. They choose instead a negative identity, i.e., an identity perversely based on all those identifications and roles which […] had been presented to them as most undesirable or dangerous and yet also as most real.”

The individual who chooses a negative identity rejects roles, including gender, nationality, and class, that have been presented as positive models of behavior. Instead, the person either chooses inappropriate groups with which to associate or chooses to be “nothing.” Erikson found that adolescents who assumed a negative identity often had mothers who tried to maintain a façade of wealth, status, or happiness and to force their children to do the same.

“The outerworld of the ego is made up of the egos of others significant to it. […] My inner world is ordered and includes them, which makes me, in turn, hospitable to the way they order their world and include me—a mutual affirmation […] To this, at any rate, I would restrict the term mutuality, which is the secret of love.”

Erikson returns to the idea that the ego’s job is to synthesize. Now, however, it isn’t only bridging disconnects between the levels of personality development but interacting with the egos of others and opening the individual to a mutual relationship that is the basis, or secret, of love. The author will later frame the end of adolescence as the ability to receive and give love and care, so this task of the ego is a significant one.

“It is, again, Hartmann who opens the way to new considerations. His statement that the human infant is born preadapted to an ‘average expectable environment’ implies a more truly biological as well as an inescapably societal formulation.”

Erikson often compares his own theories to those of other psychoanalysts, including Freud and later analysts such as fellow neo-Freudian Heinz Hartmann. His point here is that psychoanalysis has for too long had a strictly biological basis that doesn’t consider the role of the developing individual’s environment. Hartmann’s theory that the infant is preadapted to an “average expectable environment” recalls Erikson’s own epigenetic theory, which posits an inner plan that creates the social interactions needed for a child’s personality development. Hartmann adds to it the idea that under normal circumstances a society will provide the predictable opportunities needed for growth.

“Psychoanalytic treatment presupposes in therapist and patient not only a communality of observation, but also a strength and direction of a therapeutic ideology which makes such communality fruitful to both.”

Erikson has previously described problems that can occur between patient and therapist, including identity resistance—the fear that the analyst will destroy the patient’s weak identity and replace it with his own. Here he instead describes the best circumstances under which therapy can take place. Erikson’s goal is to strengthen what he calls the inner freedom and outer realism of the patient while freeing the analytic process from the prevailing ideologies of the day.

“To develop that sense is a joint task of the consistency of individual life and the ethical potency of the historical process.”

The “crisis” of adolescence is to achieve fidelity or loyalty to something. Erikson gives as examples scientific accuracy, obedience, fairness in games, and the production of art. The process can require a lot of testing on the adolescent’s part, including going to extremes in a particular field or interest. Erikson believes that society must do its part in helping the adolescent to find something to believe in. The “ethical potency of the historical process” is the extent to which society fulfills the highest standards of its members, including its youth.

“The denial of the irreversibility of historical time appears to be expressed in a clique’s or a gang’s self-appointment as a ‘people’ or a ‘class’ with a tradition and an ethics all its own.”

Erikson points out that some adolescents try to solve their inability to imagine any sort of career by joining cliques or gangs, which he considers to be a type of adolescent pathology. Here he suggests that gangs seem to suspend the passing of time by existing outside the mainstream society. They “cure” the joiner’s career issues by providing jobs that might take the form of robberies, fights, or drugs. Members always seem busy even if they are just hanging around. He cautions against diagnosing gang members as psychotic or criminal, as this can further drive them to form a negative identity.

“If we now turn back to history, it cannot be overlooked that at times political undergrounds of all kinds can and do make use not only of the ‘sure’ need for fidelity to be found in any new generation looking for new causes but also of the store of wrath accumulated in those totally deprived in their need to develop any faith.”

One of Erikson’s major themes is the effect of historical developments on identity development. An underground political movement may provide young people with a positive way to find the fidelity they seek. However, he cautions that such movements can also create demagogues who want to exploit youthful devotion to an idea.

“A profound difference exists between the sexes in the experience of the ground plan of the human body.”

Erikson took part in a long-term study in which he observed children playing with blocks and toys. He found that girls clearly preferred building scenes that took place within walls while boys liked to build scenes outside of walls. He relates these preferences to the girls’ possession of an “inner space,” the vagina, and the boys’ possession of a penis. He believes women always carry an awareness of their child-bearing capacity and that it will affect all their actions and decisions, even if they choose not to have children.

“We may well hope, therefore, that there is something in woman’s specific creativity which has waited only for a clarification of her relationship to masculinity (including her own) in order to assume her share of leadership in those fateful human affairs which so far have been left entirely in the hands of gifted and driven men.”

Erikson doesn’t believe that women’s understanding of their ability to bear children “dooms” them to be wives and mothers. Rather, he believes that women who can achieve true equality in the workforce, especially in the areas of technology and science, can bring qualities associated with childbearing to roles and tasks previously held by men. These qualities, such as caring for and protecting others, would be a much-needed check on male tendencies toward domination.

“The crisis of youth is also the crisis of a generation and of the ideological soundness of its society: there is also a complementarity of identity and ideology.”

Erikson explores the role of African Americans in what today is called the civil rights movement. Here he considers the fact that African Americans were long denied the opportunity to participate in ideological trends associated with technical and economic expansion, such as mercantilism and industrialization, and thus were deprived of a key factor in resolving the identity crisis. Disadvantaged Black youth channeled their anger into support for a revolution in ideology.