Identity Versus Role Confusion: Who am I?
EGO IDENTITY is the attainment of a firm sense of self—who one is,
where one is headed in life, and what one believes in. People who achieve
ego identity clearly understand their personal needs, values, and life goals.
Erikson believed ego identity is the key developmental task of adolescence
and sets the stage for meeting the next life challenge: achieving intimate,
secure relationships with others. In other words, we need to know who we
are before we can reveal our true selves to others in the context of close,
binding relationships. Evidence supports Erikson’s view that people who
successfully negotiate earlier psychosocial crises, including the ego identity
challenge, are generally better able to resolve later psychosocial crises in
life. By extending psychosocial development beyond childhood, Erikson
raised our awareness of the importance of the developmental challenges we
face not only in adolescence but also throughout our lives.
Erikson coined the term Identity crisis to characterize the stressful
period of soul searching and serious self-examination that many adolescents
experience when struggling to develop a set of personal values and direction
in life. Adolescents who successfully weather an identity crisis emerge as
their own persons as people who have achieved a state of ego identity. Ego
identity, however, continues to develop throughout life. Our occupational
goals and our political, moral, and religious believes often change over time.
Therefore, we may weather many identity crises in life.
Through the struggle for personal identity is usually most intense
during adolescence, many adolescents never grapple with an identity crisis.
They may develop a firm sense of ego identity by modeling themselves after
others, especially parents, without undergoing any period of serious soul
searching or self-examination. Others who never experience an identity
crisis may fail to develop a clear sense of ego identity. They may remain at
sea, aimlessly taking each day as it comes without any clear values or goals.
They remain in a state of ROLE DIFFUSION, a confused and drifting state
in which they lack direction in life. They may be especially vulnerable to
negative peer influences such as illicit drug use. They may also become
intolerant of people who differ from themselves for fear or shattering their
own fragile identities and have difficulty forging or maintaining close
personal relationships with others.
To make the transition from dependence on parents to dependence on
oneself, the adolescent must develop a stable sense of self. This process is
called identity formation- a term derived from Erik Erikson’s theory, which
sees the major challenge of this stage of life as identity versus role
confusion. The overwhelming question for the young person becomes “Who
am I?” Erikson sees identity as “the capacity to see oneself as having
continuity and sameness.” People need to know that they can trust
themselves to behave and feel as they expect to behave and feel in any
situation. They need to feel they know themselves. It is equally important
that others recognize this consistency. A sense of identity also includes the
ability to adapt one’s needs to the opportunities the environment offers.
James Marcia believes that finding an identity requires a period of
intense self-exploration called identity crisis. The identity crisis involves
the decisions necessary to carry out an adult life: What will I do with my
life? Whom will I live with? What religious persuasion, if any shall I
follow? What will my ideals, values and political beliefs be? These
questions involve a separation from parents and other authority figures. He
recognizes four possible outcomes of this process. One is identity
achievement. Adolescents who have reached this status have passed through
the identity crisis and succeeded in making personal choices about their
beliefs and goals. They are comfortable which those choices because the
choices are their own. In contrast are adolescents who have taken the path of
identity foreclosure. They have prematurely settled on an identity that others
provided for them. They have become what those others want them to be
without ever going through an identity crisis. For example, a student may be
majoring in biology because her parents expect her to become a physician.
Other adolescents are in moratorium regarding the choice of an identity.
They are in the process of actively exploring various role options, but they
have not yet committed to any of them. Finally, there are teens experiencing
identity diffusion. They avoid considering role options in any conscious way.
Many are dissatisfied with this condition, but are unable to start a search to
“find themselves.” Some resort to escapist activities such as drug or alcohol
abuse. Of course, any given adolescent’s identity status can change over
time as the person matures or even regresses.
Other Adolescent theories
David Elkind used Piaget’s notion of adolescent egocentrism to account for
two fallacies of thought he noticed in this age group. The first is the
imaginary audience- the tendency of teenagers to feel they are constantly
being observed by others, that people are always judging them on their
appearance and behavior. This feeling of being perpetually “onstage” may
be the source of much self-consciousness, concern about personal
appearance, and showing off in adolescence.
The other fallacy of adolescent thinking is the personal fableadolescents’ unrealistic sense of their own uniqueness. For instance, a
teenager might feel that other couldn’t possibly understand the love they feel
toward a boyfriend or girlfriend because that love is so unique and special.
This view is related to the feeling of invulnerability we mentioned earlier.
Many teenagers believe they are so different from other people that they
won’t be touched by the negative things that happen to others. This feeling
of invulnerability is consistent with the reckless risk taking among people in
this age group.