Identity: Youth and Crisis

Chapter 1, originally written between 1966 and 1967, is also the book’s prologue and serves as a retrospective look at the essays. Erikson states that the meaning of identity, as it is discussed in the book, has greatly changed in the past 20 years. “Identity crisis,” a term popularized by Erikson in Childhood and Society, has experienced a similar trajectory, as various groups along with the media seized on it to reflect any conflict within any group. Social scientists have also misused the terms. A positive consequence of the term’s wide usage is that “identity crisis” is no longer viewed as a catastrophe. Instead, as Erikson intended, it refers to a turning point, a loss of “ego identity.”

Erikson looks to past theorists to further define the concept of identity. The first is American psychologist and educator William James, who wrote to his wife about how a man’s character could be discerned by whatever attitude made him feel most alive. Erikson interprets James’s use of “character” as meaning a sense of identity, one that Erikson interprets as an active tension. The second is Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who referred to his awareness of an inner identity in discussing his attraction to his Jewish faith. Erikson describes Freud’s use of “identity” as meaning a definition of one’s self in relation to a group.

Erikson concludes that these statements by his predecessors in psychology establish some dimensions of identity but also show why the concept is so hard to grasp. Identity is both located “in the core of the individual” and “in the core of his communal culture” (21; italics are the author’s). The process is largely unconscious and changes constantly, beginning in infancy and reaching its normative crisis in adolescence.

Furthermore, identity formation cannot be separated from social and historical factors; each exists in relation to the other in what Erikson calls a “psychosocial relativity” (23). Traditional psychoanalysis doesn’t quite grasp the concept of identity because it doesn’t take the effect of the environment into account. Wars, revolutions, and moral rebellions are fundamental shapers of identity.

Erikson next turns his attention to the young people of his current era, the late 1960s. He contrasts them with the youth of the late 1940s, pointing to a unisex style of dress in the 1960s as an example of sexual identity confusion and a desire not to conform or grow up. He considers this an example of negative identity. At the same time, he acknowledges that society is constantly changing and will continue to do so. If adolescence is the time that environment becomes essential for ego formation, then it is also the stage when a person is much more involved with current events than in earlier childhood stages. Furthermore, young people who reject traditional concepts are taking part in their own set of shared concepts via rebellious identity formation.

Identity formation is a generational issue. Young people can only rebel against old values that are well-defined, and they can draw strength from their own times. Erikson focuses on advances in technology and science as sources of identity development that allow adolescents to “become what they do,” a process he calls “cultural consolidation” (31). The ability to do something right is a source of pride in any era and in fact defines the era from a historical perspective.

In Erikson’s time, technology and science allow adolescents to deal with and identify with their parents. Any corrections needed to fix problems with “super-machines” can be invented without compromising old-fashioned values. As an example, those youth who do not oppose the war in Vietnam are patriotic and obedient but can also embrace new technology that makes weapons more accurate.

Erikson next turns to the topic of what he calls neohumanism—new humanism as seen in youth who reject regimentation and embrace civil disobedience and nonviolence. He again contrasts these youth with those of 20 years before, whose identity problems were centered in the ideological void of the post-WWII era. Modern youth have more outlets for their humanism, including the civil rights movement and the Peace Corps. In seeking a worldwide identity that can bridge wealth gaps, they have more positive ways to channel their rebellion.

Technology leads to changes in generational self-perception. Rapid technological change makes it impossible for younger people to smoothly step into the roles of older ones. Even the period of adolescence becomes fractured, with older and younger adolescents each occupying their own area of specialization. Erikson speculates that the ethical standards of future generations will contend with extended lifespans and changes in traditional gender roles.

He concludes Chapter 1 by considering the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis, identity evolves because God created Adam, the first man, in God’s own image. The relationship between humankind and God as their imagined creator did not fundamentally change for millennia, but in the mid-20th century, a radical shift in this relationship occurred, as the birth control pill allowed women to control their own reproduction, while nuclear weapons gave people the power to undo the very act of their own creation. While every group, whether it is a nation, a religion, or some other entity, has an identity and a mythology or history, overglorifying group identity can lead to war. Erikson wonders if perhaps the preoccupation with individual identity among the youth of the late 1960s stems from this realization; at the very least, it suggests the significance of identity in the evolution of societies.

In Chapter 2, Erikson draws on various anthropological observations he has made to support his theory, written in 1946, 1951, and 1954. He notes that in psychoanalysis, the study of the ego doesn’t consider its strong relationship to social life, even though people exist within common ethnic groups, historical eras, economic pursuits, and images of good and evil. Psychoanalysis also ignores the similarities of life cycles across all groups. Erikson’s purpose in the essay is to rectify these oversights.

Erikson first explores how social groups contribute to the needs of the developing child. He points to anthropological observations he made in 1938 on the Sioux people, who resisted efforts by the American government to “reeducate” them and direct them away from their origins as nomadic buffalo hunters toward a sedentary existence. As a result of these efforts, the children were blocked in their expectations and ambitions. A child who learns to walk might once have been categorized by adults by their ability to swiftly follow prey. Now, however, the child cannot build self-esteem in the accomplishment through traditional expectations of the social group. Erikson terms this sense of accomplishment, which exists within a social reality, the “ego identity” (49).

Another area of Erikson’s observational work is the morale of men in submarines during wartime. Crew and captain must work together with “extreme” interdependence in a tight space, enduring monotony while remaining ready for immediate action at any time. Erikson finds no good answer within traditional psychiatric discussions for why men might choose such a life. Instead, he believes that when the ego works in harmony with the social organization, it is functioning well.

Children have many opportunities to identify with others and their habits, traits, occupations, and ideas. However, the historical era in which a child lives offers a limited number of “socially meaningful models” (53), defined as models that meet the requirements of the child’s maturational stage, their particular style of ego synthesis, and cultural demands. Therapy can attempt to substitute more desirable identifications for undesirable ones but must acknowledge that the identity is already in the process of formation.

As an example of a child whose identity crisis impacted their adult lifestyle, Erikson discusses one of his patients—a dancer whose overly rigid posture, which her father demanded of her brothers, interfered with her art. The daughter of a German American, the patient failed to benefit from analysis when the analyst was Jewish. Erikson concludes that Nazi-era prototypes of German authority and Jewish weakness were at work in her unconscious. Similar images are pervasive in all classes of a particular nature or culture. The ego absorbs ideal and evil prototypes and must attempt to reconcile them.

Erikson acknowledges the contributions of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung to the concept of internalized prototypes that regulate behavior. Jung called these prototypes “archetypes” and believed they were inherited. Erikson values Jung’s concepts and believes they clarify the struggle of the dancer patient he described.

The author considers groups based on principles of suppression and exclusion, citing a patient who had been raised Jewish in a city and, as a rancher, suffered a “network” of compulsions and phobias that turned out to be a need to navigate his surroundings as if they were populated by the bullies and gangs with whom he grew up. He believes Southern women have similar psychoanalytic issues created by their need to be ladylike, to defend their honor, and to marry upward, needs at odds with their sexual urges.

In Erikson’s view, psychoanalysis offers support to those who struggle to navigate the tension between “alternatives, contrasts, and polarities which governs the American style of today” (65). Such patients struggle to synthesize various identities formed during the stages of their childhood.

Looking at veterans discharged from the armed forces, Erikson says that the American group identity depends on an individual’s ability to believe that they always have a choice. Veterans who suffer after service may have failed to find an identity within military service.

Freud roots the sources of human self-esteem in childhood narcissism, or self-love. Erikson points out that such narcissism continues to evolve into mature self-esteem, especially in adolescence, proceeding by mastery of age-appropriate skills acquired in relation to community. The formation of the ego is just one process in human development. First is the biologic process of the life cycle; second is the social process where organisms organize into groups; and third is the ego process, in which the individual is both a distinct personality and a person whose experience exists in relation to others. Any analysis of the ego must be viewed in relation to the historical changes that dominate his life cycle.

Lastly Erikson considers the topic of totalitarianism and how childhood and youth can predispose an individual to accept it. He proposes that totalitarianism is not rooted in a stage of human development but in a historical moment that favors a total state. Individuals attracted to it may have been traumatized by various crises in their own lives at varying points that rob them of wholeness. Lack of a sense of trust and religious indoctrination are examples.

Individuals can try to overcome feelings of tension or guilt by allying themselves with a state and against its enemies. The end of childhood is a particular period of crisis, when youth must obtain a “sense of inner identity” (86) that bridges childhood and adulthood. Role confusion in this process can lead to total identification to a group. It can also lead to a negative identity, one where the young adult prefers to “be nothing.” Erikson gives the example of “delinquent (addictive, homosexual) youth” (88) who prevail in cities with poor positive models.

The firm sense of inner identity that is a condition for true maturation depends on the support of social groups that are important to the adolescent, whether they are his class, nation, or culture. History and technology can, however, encroach on identification with these groups. In a worse-case scenario, the fear of loss of identity can lead to organized terror of the kind seen in totalitarian societies. Erikson suggests that the stage of adolescence should be studied to help us prevent young people from falling under negative influences.