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The Enduring Usefulness of Erikson’s Concept of the Identity Crisis in the 21st
Century: An Analysis of Student Mental Health Concerns
Article in Identity · October 2018
DOI: 10.1080/15283488.2018.1524328
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Identity
An International Journal of Theory and Research
ISSN: 1528-3488 (Print) 1532-706X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hidn20
The Enduring Usefulness of Erikson’s Concept of
the Identity Crisis in the 21st Century: An Analysis
of Student Mental Health Concerns
James E. Côté
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Identity Crisis in the 21st Century: An Analysis of Student Mental Health Concerns, Identity, DOI:
10.1080/15283488.2018.1524328
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IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2018.1524328
The Enduring Usefulness of Erikson’s Concept of the Identity Crisis
in the 21st Century: An Analysis of Student Mental Health
Concerns
James E. Côtéa
a
Department of Sociology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
ABSTRACT
Identity: Youth and Crisis provides a compilation of Erikson’s most insightful
observations of the various types of identity crisis and their impact.
Although his general writings about identity fueled much empirical
research, Erikson did not feel this research captured the complexities of
the concept, and he remarked that its meaning was morphing in ways he
never intended. Indeed, many of his explicit characterizations of the identity
crisis have not been operationalized in most neo-Eriksonian frameworks. In
this article, I reconstruct Erikson’s model of the identity crisis in its various
forms and manifestations and then apply this model to the current “student
mental health crisis.” Based on his warnings that the psychiatric model can
inappropriately label certain crisis-related behaviors as disorders, I argue
that he would have diagnosed many of the stress reactions reported by
contemporary students as representing developmental difficulties associated with moderate to severe identity confusion created by person–context adjustments.
Introduction
Erikson’s legacy is as a “psychoanalyst who profoundly reshaped views of human development”
(“Psychoanalyst coined identity crisis,” 1994, p. E8). His influence on the study of identity formation
is undisputed. The concept of identity that he introduced in the mid-20th century has been described
as a “reasonably value-neutral and interdisciplinary term” (Weigert, Teitge, & Teitge, 1986, p. 29),
influencing scientific, philosophical, and political formulations of human self-definition (Côté &
Levine, 2016). Although some observers have questioned the need for the identity concept, given
simpler concepts like self-concept (e.g., Hendry & Kloep, 2018; Hill, 1973), and others have seen
disciplinary biases in Erikson’s formulations (e.g., Rattansi & Phoenix, 2005), the concept of identity
endures today in thousands of theoretical and empirical publications. However, fundamental aspects
of identity formation—particularly the identity crisis in its multiple manifestations—have gone
unexplored in these publications. This oversight is unfortunate because the concept of the identity
crisis helps us to better understand experiences during the transition to adulthood, especially as
related to person–context adjustments and mental health.
In this article, I use Erikson’s original writings to designate the various forms and manifestations
of the identity crisis and then apply his perspective to the current “student mental health crisis.”
Based on his warnings that the psychiatric model can inappropriately label certain behaviors as
disorders, I argue that he would have diagnosed many of the stress reactions reported by contemporary students as representing developmental difficulties associated with moderate to severe
CONTACT James E. Côté
cote@uwo.ca
London, N N6A 5C2, Canada.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Department of Sociology, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St.,
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J. E. CÔTÉ
identity confusion created by problematic person–context fits, especially among students who are
not well prepared emotionally and academically for the rigors of higher education.
What did Erikson write about the identity crisis?
Erikson’s popular reputation stems largely from his term identity crisis. As the originator of this
term, in Identity: Youth and Crisis, he felt it incumbent on him to clarify common misconceptions of
the concept, which he observed had a “singular and often erratic appeal” (1968, p. 11). He did so,
along with the terms identity and identity diffusion/confusion, as part of this 20-year retrospective
book. Erikson offered the following reflection on the divergent uses of these terms:
“Identity” and “identity crisis” have in popular and scientific usage become terms which alternately circumscribe something so large and so seemingly self-evident that to demand a definition would almost seem petty,
while at other times they designate something made so narrow for purposes of measurement that the over-all
meaning is lost, and it could just as well be called something else (1968, pp. 15–16).
Erikson went on to note the tendency for people to interpret the word “crisis” in its most extreme
sense of “impending catastrophe.” In contrast, his intention for the term’s meaning was not one of
disaster, but rather was to specify “a necessary turning point, a crucial moment, when development
must move one way or another, marshaling resources of growth, recovery, and further differentiation” (italics added, p. 16). Consistent with his generally positive view of human development, a
crisis can thus be an opportunity for tremendous growth if people treat it as such and actively engage
it in their lives. Failure to work through an identity crisis in a positive manner, however, can have
some unfortunate immediate and lifelong consequences.
Erikson described three ways in which the identity crises can take shape: severity, prolongation,
and aggravation. An identity crisis becomes severe when the sense of identity confusion overwhelms
the sense of ego identity. A prolonged identity crisis is revealed when a realignment of childhood and
adolescent identifications takes place over a long period of time. This realignment may be helped,
hindered, or delayed by social contexts. Last, an identity crisis is aggravated when repeated attempts
to resolve the identity stage are unsuccessful, a situation that can be exacerbated by involvements in
social contexts where the person is not prepared and is thus “misaligned.”
How did Erikson see identity confusion within the crisis?
Erikson recalled in Identity: Youth and Crisis that he coined the term identity crisis during
the Second World War in his clinical work with soldiers who had “neither been ‘shellshocked’ nor
become malingerers, but had through the exigencies of war lost a sense of personal sameness and
historical continuity” (1968, p. 17). It was during these clinical experiences that it occurred to him
that these patients “were impaired in that central control over themselves for which, in the psychoanalytic scheme, only the ‘inner agency’ of the ego could be held responsible. Therefore, I spoke of a
loss of ‘ego identity’” (p. 17). In other words, these patients had suffered trauma that caused them to
lose their sense of themselves as having a past and future as a temporally continuous entity—their
sense of ego identity was extremely impaired.
After the war, he saw similar symptoms of identity confusion associated with ego identity
impairment in “severely conflicted young people whose sense of confusion [was] due, rather, to a
war within themselves, and in confused rebels and destructive delinquents who war on their society”
(1968, p. 17). In drawing a connection between the two situations, Erikson designated the identity
crisis as a period during which an individual’s previous identifications are no longer experienced as
suitable—they are misaligned with the person’s new social context—but an integrated adult identity
is not yet established, the result of which can be a sense of identity confusion.
Erikson defined identity confusion as “a split of self-images, a loss of center and a dispersion”
(1968, p. 212). The symptoms associated with the transition to adulthood include problems of
IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
3
intimacy, distortions of time perspectives (vacillations between a sense of urgency and procrastination), a “diffusion of industry” (an inability to concentrate on required tasks and an excessive
preoccupation with some one-sided activity), and a choice of negative identity (1968, pp. 167–176).
These symptoms are often transitory, but in its more severe manifestations identity confusion can be
observed “[1] in excessively prolonged moratoria … [2] in repeated impulsive attempts to end the
moratorium with sudden choices … [along with a denial] that some reversible commitment has
already taken place, or [3] sometimes in severe regressive pathology” (1968, p. 246).
Erikson’s designation of adolescence as a moratorium period
In its generic usage, adolescence is understood as a transitional stage–the period of adjustment in
leaving childhood and preparing for adulthood. For Erikson, adolescence encompasses a psychosocial moratorium that allows “for the integration of identity elements” (Erikson, 1968, p. 128). This
moratorium provides “a delay of adult commitments” to undertake this integration (1968, p. 157).
As such, it can be the most important period of identity activity in the entire life course. For Erikson,
the identifications developed during childhood are reworked and realigned during this transitional
stage and eventually synthesized into an adult identity. At the same time, the developmental changes
during this stage are culturally regulated and thus “normed” in certain ways. Accordingly, Erikson
ascribed “a normative ‘identity crisis’ to the age of adolescence and young adulthood” (1968, p. 17).
Erikson explained the difference between identifications and identity in the following way: “Identity
formation … begins where the usefulness of identification ends. It arises from the selective repudiation
and mutual assimilation of childhood identifications and their absorption in a new configuration” (1968,
p. 159). Erikson went on to describe how identifications become realigned and integrated into a larger
whole for those who successfully navigate adolescence and the identity crisis therein:
The final identity, then, as fixed at the end of adolescence, is superordinated to any single identification with
individuals of the past: it includes all significant identifications, but it also alters them in order to make a unique
and reasonably coherent whole of them (1968, p. 161).
Most neo-Eriksonian approaches have substituted the idea of “exploration” for the crisis concept (e.g.,
Marcia, 1980) but in doing so have underplayed the complexities of the identity crisis. In contrast, Erikson’s
various works are rich with observations of these other forms, individually, cross-culturally, and historically, and these other forms may be more significant developmentally (cf. Baumeister, Shapiro, & Tice,
1985). For example, identity crises involving struggles to resolve unconscious conflicts may be more
common than explicit explorations of commitments that people can recollect. These conflict-based crises
may involve no grand plan and no flamboyant “search for identity” and may be more emotional than
cognitive (involving ambivalence, anxiety, resentment, and rebellion), but may still result in a realignment
of identifications. Here is how Erikson described the realignment of identifications into an adult identity,
and the associated difficulties along the way, within identity moratorium of adolescence:
The adolescent process … is conclusively complete only when the individual has subordinated his childhood
identifications to a new kind of identification, achieved in absorbing sociability and in competitive apprenticeship
with and among his age mates. These new identifications are no longer characterized by the playfulness of
childhood and the experimental zest of youth: with dire urgency they force the young individual into choices
and decisions which will, with increasing immediacy, lead to commitments “for life.” The task to be performed here
by the young person and by his society is formidable. It necessitates, in different individuals and in different
societies, great variations in the duration, intensity, and ritualization of adolescence. Societies offer, as individuals
require, more or less sanctioned intermediary periods between childhood and adulthood, often characterized by a
combination of prolonged immaturity and provoked precocity (1968, pp. 155–156, italics added).
Culture conditions that prolong the identity crisis
Beginning with his early writings on the topic, Erikson (1950) argued that the identity stage is
coterminous with adolescence. Within this stage, he proposed that an identity crisis of some form,
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even an extremely muted one, is experienced in some degree. This proposition is consistent with his
proposal that all eight psychosocial stages of the life cycle have a crisis period during which the
specific stage is resolved, for better or worse (Erikson, 1950). Well-structured cultures provide some
sort of normed rite of passage, including forms of apprenticeship and initiations, to ease this
transition. Common to these rites is a benign guidance by the adult community to help young
people resolve tensions between identity confusion and a sense of ego identity (Côté, 1994).
In some instances, rites of passage create a tension around the issue of whether young people will
pass an emotionally challenging test of some sort. Passing this test becomes a major marker of
adulthood and full acceptance by the community. As such, the experience provides a keystone for a
resolution of the identity stage. Mastering this challenge strengthens the ego, giving individuals a
sense of accomplishment and making them feel worthwhile in a welcoming adult community.
However, in other instances, when the structures of transition into adulthood are not adequate or
benign, or the adult community is in disarray, severe identity crises can be more widespread. Erikson
described this contrast as follows:
In some young people, in some classes, at some periods of history, the … identity crisis will be noiseless and
contained within the rituals of passage marking a second birth; while in other people, classes, and periods, the crisis
will be clearly marked off as a critical period intensified by collective strife and epidemic tension (1975, p. 21).
In understanding these cultural contrasts, it must be emphasized that Erikson did not believe that a
severe identity crisis is a necessary precursory of subsequent psychosocial development. Indeed,
contrary to common misconceptions of his work, Erikson argued that a severe identity crisis is not
the norm historically, even in American society. Rather, as noted above regarding the “noiseless
crisis,” he argued that “the vast majority of young people … can go along with their parents in a kind
of fraternal identification” (1968, p. 33) as a basis for their adult identity. The identity crisis is least
severe among those who accept their culture at face value, in spite of any cultural disarray, which
Erikson believed describes most young people even in modern societies. Young people who accept
their parents’ guidance tend to work through an identity crisis in a muted and barely discernible
form, even if over a long period of time. In tribal societies, the adult community is typically united in
guiding young people through the identity stage in order to ensure that any crisis period (even one
staged in a rite of passage) was short and had a good chance of a successful resolution.
Currently, young people face a historically unprecedented delay in the transition to adulthood.
Postsecondary educational contexts traditionally imposed a delay in adopting an adult identity for
only a small, academically elite portion of the population. However, with recent mass expansions of
these contexts, the delay in these contexts is currently affecting far more young people than was the
case in the 1950s and before. Although many young people find this to be a positive experience and
rise to the occasion, there is evidence that this delay is experienced as arbitrary by other young
people (Côté, 2014a). The arbitrary nature of the delay not only may lack meaning in the lives of
many people but also can produce a problematic identity crisis for them that they do not know how
to actively engage themselves in. At the time when Erikson wrote Identity: Youth and Crisis, it
appears that the majority of college students of the day were more willing to openly acknowledge the
challenges posed by the identity crisis than is the case today, perhaps seeing a crisis as a matter of
course and thus being more willing to actively engage it in a growth-producing manner. In fact,
Erikson quipped that he sometimes found himself “asking a student who claims that he is in an
‘identity crisis’ whether he is complaining or boasting” (1968, p. 314). That willingness to actively
engage on their own the challenges of identity formation no longer seems to be as common, as we
see next.
Current applications: student mental health
A moral panic about the mental health of college students has been sweeping across campuses in the
United States for the past decade or so. (Although reports of this crisis are widespread in the United
IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
5
States, they can also be found in other countries like Canada and the United Kingdom; e.g., Condra
et al., 2015; Ovid, Lao, Bigham, & Cribb, 2017). However, for the sake of brevity, the focus in this
paper will be on the United States.) For example, a report published in 2002 warned of a “rising tide”
of students with mental illnesses seeking counseling services (Eudaly, 2002). In 2004, a book was
published titled, College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Health Crisis and What to Do About It
(Kadison & Digeronimo, 2004). More recent publications have increased the alarm (e.g., Iarovici,
2014). A paper published in a leading higher-education journal claimed that this rising tide “is well
on its way to becoming a ‘tidal wave’” (Condra et al., 2015). Another article published in a psychiatry
journal asserted that “we are facing a true and profound crisis of college mental health. We cannot
afford to jeopardize our future, our nation’s youth” (Balon et al., 2015, p. 496). Meanwhile, the
mainstream media regularly reports on this issue (e.g., Gabriel, 2010), with some stories portraying it
as an “unprecedented” problem (e.g., Rivera, 2015) and others claiming that demand for mental
health services is “exploding” (Ovid et al., 2017).
In evaluating these reports, it is helpful to note that there is evidence of a relatively consistent
percentage of American college students having mental health issues (as do all segments of the
population), since at least the 1920s when records were first kept. A half century ago, Reifler and
Liptzin (1969) argued that between the 1920s and 1960s, a rule of thumb of 10% was used to estimate
the prevalence of mental health needs among college students. This prevalence rate has been
confirmed by empirical studies until around 2005, after which a rise has been recorded by some
studies (e.g., American College Health Association, 2009, 2016). However, these recent studies have
some serious shortcomings, discussed below.
Some of these recent studies and various media reports have been informed by annual reports
from the National Survey of Counseling Center Directors (Gallagher, 2012), which is based on
perceptions of counseling center directors across the United States. Note that these are perceptions,
not clinical diagnoses. The reasons for this declared crisis have not been clearly articulated and seem
to perplex many of those in the counseling profession and university administrations. For instance,
Gallagher (2012, p. 177), who oversaw the National Survey of Counseling Center Directors for
several decades, stated “the hypotheses for this increase of students experiencing severe psychological
success [sic] are diverse and speculative.” Gallagher argued that the increase reported by the
directors has much to do with the success of their profession in providing treatment for students
who now enter university with preexisting conditions because of the advent of new types of
medications and because these students know they can rely on counseling services that manage
medications and provide psychological support. Gallagher added the following possible causes:
increased family dysfunction, early exposure to drugs, alcohol, and sexual experiences that students are not
emotionally prepared to handle, and excessive pampering and protected childhoods, leaving them vulnerable to the stressors of college life … parental divorce, the impact of technology, and changing societal
mores. (2012, p. 177)
These possible causes, however, can be applied in varying extents to previous generations, dating
back to baby boomers, for which no comparable alarm was raised.
Other hypotheses have been offered, including the large numbers of students who work for pay
while attending college full-time, but this explanation is partial at best when put to empirical scrutiny
(Côté & Allahar, 2011). Other hypotheses include the academic workload becoming so heavy that it
is causing intolerable stress among an increasing proportion of students. For example, since the
1980s, more American students have been reporting feeling “frequently overwhelmed by all I had to
do,” nearly doubling from 18% in the mid-1980s to 34% in 2015 (Eagan et al., 2016). However, when
this hypothesis is put to empirical scrutiny, we find that the workload of American college students
has actually been declining for several decades, with current students engaging in about half of the
study time (preparing for class and doing assignments) than did those in the 1960s and before
(Babcock & Marks, 2011). This dramatically lower study time is found for all types of students (male/
female, working/not working, first-generation/college-educated parents), in all fields, and in all types
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of colleges (high-to-low selectivity, liberal arts, and research intensive; Babcock & Marks, 2011).
Now, most full-time students in effect treat their studies like a part-time job in terms of time spent
studying and doing assignments (i.e., they are on average putting 25 hours or less per week into all
aspects of their college education; Côté, 2014b).
The current higher-educational context
When discussing the possible reasons for the decline in academic effort, it is important not to focus
solely at the level of the individual. At the institutional level, colleges and universities have also
changed over the past half-century, introducing several normative cross-pressures into the lives of
students (Côté, 2019).
One important change is that the norms of lower academic engagement are institutional—that is,
they are implicitly condoned by colleges and universities themselves. If they were not condoned,
students would not be able to earn high grades and graduate with these lower levels of effort. It
appears that colleges and universities are complicit in this change in part because of the new norms
of lower academic engagement at the secondary level. In an attempt to increase high school
completion rates, over the past few decades many high schools have been awarding high grades
for low levels of effort and achievement. These schools are consequently graduating large numbers of
poorly prepared students, effectively punting the problem of academic preparation to the tertiary
level. In concert with this, universities have transitioned to providing forms of mass higher education
in which the diversity of students has increased, including wider variations in motivations to learn as
well as prior academic achievement and preparedness (Côté & Allahar, 2007, 2011; Trow, 2010).
Pointing these things out is not to suggest that disadvantaged students should be discouraged
from going to college. However, sending young people into contexts for which they are not prepared,
regardless of their social background, is bound to create problems for their identity formation and
inadequate support for resolving their identity crisis. Moreover, although students from disadvantaged backgrounds may be less likely to be academically prepared for college-level study by their
lower-quality primary and secondary education, this relationship is by no means absolute. For
example, low levels of preparation are found among a significant proportion of students from all
social class backgrounds (Toby, 2010). That is, whereas about one-third of American college students
need to take remedial courses to make up for their poor preparation by high schools, the differences
between low-income and high-income students are small (37% vs. 31%, respectively), as are ethnic
differences (31% of White non-Hispanics require remediation vs. 41% of Hispanics and 42% of Black
non-Hispanics; Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, 2008). Unfortunately, these remedial courses
often do very little to rectify the problem for most students. The majority of students who are
required to take remedial courses never complete college, with the probability of graduating
diminished with each additional remedial course taken (Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, 2008;
Santos & Haycock, 2016; Toby, 2010).
As we delve deeper into this issue, several other findings emerge about the widespread lack of
preparation of American college students. Some 60% of American college students have SAT scores
that are lower than the standardized cutoff for college readiness, yet these students are accepted by
colleges and universities nonetheless (Côté & Allahar, 2011; Murray, 2008). This may help to explain
why some two-thirds of students report feeling less emotionally prepared than their peers in their
first year of college (Stoltzfus, 2015). Yet, curiously, most students who require remedial courses
have little idea that they have skills deficits before entering college, and neither do their parents,
because they earned good grades and took the advanced courses recommended by their high schools.
Overall, the American public appears to be poorly informed about this problem and the lack of
standards currently underpinning a diploma in many high schools (Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors, 2008).
The repercussions of the problem of academic standards are far-reaching. In a large longitudinal
study, Arum and Roksa (2011) found that about one-third of American students learn very little over
IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
7
four years of university, with one of the key factors being poor high school preparation. Yet, when
controlling for academic preparation in regression analyses, differences in parental education disappear with respect to high school GPA, SAT scores, and number of AP courses taken. Ethnic
differences on these variables are also greatly reduced when controlling for academic preparation.
Arum and Roksa conclude that “students from less educated families can do as well—in terms of
growth in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills … —as those from more educated
families, but they need better academic experiences in high schools than they are currently receiving”
(Arum & Roksa, 2011, p. 50). In other words, well-prepared students from all family backgrounds
can do very well in college.
The solutions to problems of student preparation thus lay primarily with events prior to college
matriculation. There is only so much higher-educational institutions can do to rectify poor preparation, and lowering standards to accommodate this subset of students is not a good solution either for
students (whose lack of preparation will simply be punted forward to their next step in the transition
to work, further delaying their identity formation) or for the wider society (whose net level of
national human capital will suffer, reducing prosperity and international competitiveness).
Moreover, the attempts to respond to a “college for all” policy and accommodate all who desire a
higher credential have produced a system with a high failure rate that is guaranteed to be stressful to
a proportion of students. Thus, understanding the extent to which pushing poorly prepared students
into higher-educational contexts produces emotional problems should be a top priority, if only to
reduce the hardships imposed on these students.
Given the lack of support for the above-mentioned hypotheses about the causes of the student
mental health crisis, this evidence of high levels of academic unpreparedness before college suggests
that there is something substantial but misunderstood behind the moral panic about student mental
health. Fortunately, a return to Erikson’s early work yields some promising hypotheses about how to
better conceptualize what is going on. Indeed, conspicuously absent from the counseling and
psychiatric literature claiming a mental health crisis is reference to the normative identity crisis of
adolescence, a crisis that can be exacerbated among those who are in incompatible contexts.
The identity crisis in higher-educational contexts
In the 20 years between coining the term identity crisis and writing Identity: Youth and Crisis,
Erikson made a number of clinical observations of young people in the throes of more severe
identity crises. In that book, he provided the following summary of these observations:
our society seems to be in the process of incorporating psychiatric treatment as [a] permissible moratoria for
young people. … This we must consider carefully, for the label or diagnosis one acquires during the
psychosocial moratorium is of the utmost importance for the process of identity formation (1968, p. 157).
This quotation harkens back to his previous writings on this topic. In 1956, Erikson said the
following to the audience of delegates at the First International Conference on Student Mental
Health:
“Identity-[Confusion]” should be discussed a great deal by this conference, not because we want to emphasize
the pathological, but because we should be aware of the fact even healthy and functioning young people
function only through the (often costly) struggle with identity-confusion. While the cost of this struggle is not
always mental disorder by any means, it can lead to a vastly limited use of inner resources and outer
opportunities. But we must understand that confusion can also presage a new order, a fact which should
prevent us from rushing with psychiatric terms into crises which are not only necessary, but maybe desirable
(Erikson, 1959, pp. 79–80, italics added).
Erikson emphasized that misdiagnosing symptoms of identity confusion can have the unintended
consequence “that a young person thus labeled and treated on the basis of such diagnosis, often is
forced, and on occasion is even eager, to accept the diagnosis as his identity” (Erikson, 1959, p. 81).
In other words, the danger is that if a young person receives psychiatric interventions, including a
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diagnosis, for difficulties associated with identity development, the labeling process might trigger a
therapeutic identity narrative to explain his or her situation (cf. Furedi, 2013; Hayes & Wynyard,
2016; Illouz, 2008; McAdams, 2011; McLean & Pasupathi, 2012). This therapeutic narrative helps the
person to make sense of identity confusion but in ways that can include identifying with enduring
labels of mental illness, along with the associated self-discrediting characteristics that can infantilize
the person at the very time when that person needs to make progress toward adulthood—to develop
a stronger sense of ego identity by actively working through the identity crisis rather than avoiding
the task.
The current claims that college students suffer from epidemic-level disorders may be unfortunately playing into this danger. For example, a major survey repeated over time since 2005 finds that
more students are reporting that within the previous year they found their “academics” to be
“traumatic or very difficult to handle” (49%; American College Health Association, 2009, 2016).
Curiously, a relatively high proportion of students also reported experiencing a “trauma” in relation
to issues like “family problems” (30%) and “personal appearance” (30%). Surely, the word trauma is
not used in the same context as Erikson saw in the soldiers who had been traumatized by war
experiences. Is this a case of histrionics among a subset of students who have identified with a
therapeutic identity narrative, or are their lives really this miserable?
These surveys also reveal that significant proportions of students reported that anxiety, depression, or stress had affected them functionally. The surveys also show that these proportions have
increased sharply over the past decade. In 2008, 18% cited anxiety as interfering with their academic
functioning, whereas in 2016, 24% did so. Over these same years, reports of depression interfering
with academic performance rose from 11% to 16% and stress did so from 27% to 34%, respectively
(American College Health Association, 2009, 2016). However, these estimates are based on selfreport screening instruments, which typically give higher rates than clinical diagnoses and are
subject to sampling error and variations (Farrer, Gulliver, Bennett, Fassnacht, & Griffiths, 2016).
Asking respondents different questions might help to get around this problem. For instance, lower
estimates are found when students are asked to report being diagnosed or treated for these symptoms:
With these estimates, anxiety increased from only 10% to 17%, depression from just 10% to 14%
(panic attacks were reported only by 5%, increasing to 9%). Still, the authors of these surveys admit
that the results “cannot be generalized to college students nationally” because those with emotional
difficulties might be more likely to respond to this type of online survey (American College Health
Association, 2009, p. 487).
Curiously, there were no questions in these surveys about how well prepared these students feel
they were academically or how much they reveled in mastering challenges, a key indicator of ego
strength and success in mastering an identity crisis. Accordingly, one wonders how much these
surveys might be playing into the high drama of some current therapeutic narratives with the choice
of wording of some questions, such as “trauma” instead of “challenge.”
Recall from the above discussion of Erikson’s writings that the symptoms of identity confusion
associated with the transition to adulthood can include problems with relationships, distortions of
time perspectives, inability to concentrate on required tasks, and excessive preoccupations with one
activity. All of these symptoms can undermine academic performance and create feelings of being
overwhelmed and stressed out, but they are transitory if dealt with effectively. Also recall that
Erikson emphasized that identity confusion–as a potential growth experience dependent on developmental adjustments–should be distinguished from disorders defined by the medical model. Of
course, individual counselors can take a variety of approaches to addressing students’ symptoms,
including behavioral–developmental ones, but if counselors react to students’ identity confusion as
symptomatic of a psychiatric disorder and label them as patients, these students may internalize that
(negative) label, setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy—the same labeling process that can turn
delinquents into lifelong criminals (Erikson & Erikson, 1957; Klimstra & Denissen, 2016). This
labeling process can derail positive developmental outcomes that would have occurred with a
positive resolution of the identity crisis. Without a positive resolution, the person can become
IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
9
stigmatized and marginalized on the threshold of adulthood. This problem has been touched on by
some contemporary identity researchers, who have recommended that college counselors and
practitioners pay closer attention to the developmental model of identity formation and less to the
medical model (e.g., Hardy et al., 2013).
Erikson did not discourage therapeutic interventions in such cases, but when they do not help
and students cannot take constructive advantage of the opportunities of the higher-education
moratorium, “it is very important for [them] … to do ‘something else’ for a while” by undertaking
a different type of identity moratorium (e.g., travel, work, volunteer service, the military; Erikson,
1959, pp. 80–82). In other words, when an identity crisis becomes highly stressful, it may be due to a
poor person–context fit, so if adjustments to a higher educational context are too overwhelming to
make, the person should seriously consider moving to a different context, at least temporarily, until
he or she can fully benefit from the opportunities offered by higher education.
However, counseling services are currently expanding in many colleges and universities
(Gallagher, 2012). A primary goal of these services is to prevent student dropout. Yet, such retention
attempts may discourage some young people from using their identity moratorium period in
broader, more developmentally positive ways, such as seeking alternative contexts to resolve their
identity crisis. In doing so, counselors may be cultivating a therapeutic identity narrative instead of
encouraging the person to find different social contexts for more productive uses of their identity
moratorium. As noted above, identification with a diagnostic label may result in long-term harm to
the person’s identity formation, especially in terms of the ability to adopt an adult identity and find
acceptance in an adult community (Erikson & Erikson, 1957). To the extent that the symptoms
would have been transient without psychiatric intervention, the counseling profession may be doing
a disservice to this client base. And to the extent that the symptoms are tied to problems of poor
academic preparation—a likelihood given the empirical evidence cited above—counselors may be
providing an “excuse” for academic accommodations that actually undermine identity formation by
enabling academic disengagement and thus poor preparation for the workforce (e.g., Eisenberg,
Golberstein, & Hunt, 2009; Kitzrow, 2003). When people are over their heads in terms of their ability
to function in a certain context, there is an element of cruelty in encouraging them to continue, even
with medications, without addressing the root of the problem.
One final trend is worth pointing out. Erikson also argued that “one of the greatest tasks in
psychiatry today … is to establish new and specific diagnostic criteria for young people” (Erikson,
1959, p. 81). It appears that the psychiatric profession attempted to do this for a while, but the
attempt was abandoned. The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders in 1980 (DSM-III) introduced “identity disorder” (American Psychiatric Association,
1980). A decade later identity disorder was redefined as “identity problem” (DSM-IV; American
Psychiatric Association, 1994), a “soft” diagnosis with which Erikson might have agreed. Yet, in the
most recent edition, both diagnoses were dropped (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013),
and the symptoms associated with identity formation problems were classified as part of anxiety and
depression disorders (Task Force on DSM-IV, 1991). If identity-based symptoms persist over a
period of years, the DSM-5 recommends that they should be considered components of personality
disorders.
It is possible, therefore, that this shift in diagnostic categories has contributed to the increase in
(mis)diagnoses of anxiety and depression among student populations. The psychiatric profession, in
insisting on a medical-model approach, may have inadvertently contributed to a misdiagnosis and
pathologization of behavioral–developmental adjustments in identity formation, mistaking them for
anxiety and mood disorders. There may not be a student mental health “crisis” so much as a
pathologization of the identity crisis and identity confusion that Erikson warned about, exacerbated
by the large proportion of academically unprepared students pushed into higher-educational contexts. If so, we need to understand the current stresses on students that create the identity confusion
producing anxiety and depression; in turn, we need to understand the extent to which anxiety and
10
J. E. CÔTÉ
depression have become the go-to excuses for substandard academic performance among students
who adopt the therapeutic identity narrative.
Recently, several identity formation researchers addressed the problem of diagnostic ambiguity by
developing a screening measure based on the DSM-III criteria: the Identity Distress Survey (IDS;
Berman, Montgomery, & Kurtines, 2004). The IDS provides a continuous measure of identity distress
as well as a screen for a DSM-III diagnosis of identity problem. This screen provides estimates that
8% to 12% of high school and college students have an identity problem at any given time (cf. the
10% rule of thumb for student mental health issues mentioned above; Berman, Weems, & Petkus,
2009). As one would expect if student performance and success were tied to identity formation,
identity distress is correlated with normal identity explorations and is responsive to interventions
(Berman et al., 2009). Higher scores are related to poor adjustment to academic, social, and
emotional conditions and lower levels of ego strength (Gfellner & Cordoba, 2011), poor body
image (Kamps & Berman, 2011), and other negative experiences (e.g., Hernandez, Montgomery, &
Kurtines, 2006).
Summary and conclusion
Erikson’s writings about the identity crisis can shed considerable light on what is commonly referred
to as the student mental health crisis. From an Eriksonian perspective, college students are contextualized as in a moratorium period, providing time during which an identity crisis can be
experienced in relative safety and optimally resolved in a fashion that sets the stage for a positive
adulthood. Consequently, identity confusion will be common and should not be viewed as abnormal
and certainly not as a disorder unless it becomes seriously debilitating. In cases where the student is
not able to take advantage of the developmental opportunities of a higher education, psychiatric
interventions might be warranted if the student is unresponsive to academic counseling, so long as it
does not enable a false narrative and set in motion a labeling process that ultimately derails agentic
identity formation, as when someone takes on a diagnosis as a key identification in their overall
identity consolidation. If the latter is likely, students who cannot overcome feelings of being overwhelmed in educational contexts should be counseled to seek positive and productive resolutions of
their identity crisis in different social contexts, at least temporarily.
Erikson warned about “rushing with psychiatric terms into crises which are not only necessary, but maybe desirable” (Erikson, 1959, p. 80). He also inferred that psychiatric treatment
could provide a permissible delay of adulthood—a moratorium, and thus a therapeutic identity
narrative—for some young people (1968, p. 157). Since that time, psychiatric terms have been
applied to the increasing numbers of students who are reporting negative reactions to academic
contexts, but the sheer numbers involved in reports of a mental health crisis suggest that it is ill
advised for universities to institutionalize these narratives.
When seeking explanations for these reactions of being overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and
depressed, Erikson’s work suggests several research questions. First, the background academic
preparations and motivations of students seeking help and receiving diagnoses need to be assessed
to evaluate the extent to which these students do not have a good personal fit with academic
environments at that point in their lives. Second, the symptoms they report need to be evaluated
in terms of signs of identity confusion associated with an identity crisis that may have become acute,
leading them to seek help. Third, the possibility that counselors’ reactions to unprepared and
unmotivated students leads these students to adopt a therapeutic identity narrative needs to be
evaluated. And, fourth, the question needs to be explored regarding whether this therapeutic
narrative enables some students to divert responsibility for self-regulation to some external source.
The working hypothesis is that many academically unprepared students are likely to find themselves
overwhelmed, not because of a medical disorder but because of a poor person–context fit created by
their lack of preparation for the rigors of a higher education. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds
and those who might find the college context unwelcoming and hostile may need special assistance
IDENTITY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
11
in finding a positive person–context fit, but they should be advised against adopting a therapeutic
identity narrative rather than adapting to the university context as a positive step to further identity
development. This crisis-exacerbating situation would be compounded among those who have
problems with self-regulation and being active agents in their own identity development in the
relatively unstructured college context.
Following Erikson’s warnings, the wrong sorts of interventions would aggravate an identity crisis
and even produce long-term identity problems, rather than helping certain students resolve the crisis
in a productive, growth-enhancing manner.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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