Identity Crisis

1950

Erik Erikson (1902–1994)

Lakesha, age thirteen, seems very caught up in herself. She spends a great deal of time thinking about her appearance, wondering about her future, and talking about her activities. She doesn’t seem to think anything bad can happen to her. In this, it turns out that she is very similar to most of her same-age peers. The preoccupations of Lakesha and her friends illustrate what Erik Erikson called the identity versus role confusion stage of psychosocial development.

In his 1950 book, Childhood and Society, Erikson posited that identity development is the major challenge of Adolescence. The demands of this stage of development center on such questions as, Who am I? What am I going to do with my life? How do I fit into my family and my world? For teenagers, these questions and the consequent actions are driven by the need to individuate, or differentiate themselves from their peers and others in their world. Positive identity formation results in a clearer sense of self and provides a platform for the next stage of psychosocial development, which often includes marriage and vocational choice.

There is an interesting biographical aspect to Erikson’s emphasis on identity: he did not know his father. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to a single mother, who married a Mr. Homburger when Erik was three. Later in childhood, Erikson discovered that Mr. Homburger was not his biological father. Thus he came to adulthood not knowing his own identity. After being trained as a child psychoanalyst by Anna Freud, Erikson married an American woman and emigrated to America during the Nazi period in Germany. After various appointments, he was offered a position in California. On his move there, he decided to settle his identity by becoming his own father: he changed his name from Homburger to Erikson.

SEE ALSO Psychoanalysis (1899), Adolescence (1904), Growth Studies (1927)

Street graffiti in Vancouver, BC, Canada, conveys the sense of alienation that many adolescents struggle through as they develop an individual identity.