Erikson, E. H. (1956). The problem of ego identity. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4(1), 56-121.
Note: I was looking for some foundational readings on identity and came across this. This is mainly a text about identity development from a Freudian psychoanalytical perspective, which was - initially - disappointing. This is the type of paper that I would imagine being read by a person with a pipe and a tweed jacket with leather elbow pads. It starts off by identifying identity stages in the life of George Bernard Shaw, goes to clinical cases (which were actually pretty interesting), before concluding with an analysis of the Kibbutz movement in Israel. At any rate, instead of summarizing the rather spotty theoretical claims, I’m just going to go over some concepts and quotes that I found both insightful and useful.
Summary
The author, referring to George Bernard Shaw, states “what he finally became, seems to him to have been as innate.” This raises the question of the perceptibility of identity evolution. It also points to a paradox - how can a person become what they have always been? Nevertheless, it is a feeling that is reflected in the phrase “coming into one’s own.” The author later states, “Its most obvious concomitants are a feeling of being at home in one’s body, a sense of ‘knowing where one is going,’ and an inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count.”
Acute identity diffusion is the inability to form an identity, which the author states happens at the end of adolescence and before adulthood. The oncoming identity will ideally “reconcile his conception of himself and his community’s recognition of him.” This highlights the “social negotiation” that is inherent in identity. Regarding the search for identity, “it is as if our patients surrendered their own identity to that of a brother or sister in the hope of regaining a bigger and better one by some act of merging.” Indeed, seeking identity through attaching oneself to something larger (whether a charismatic leader or an organization or movement) seems to be a common identity building tactic. Unfortunately, “rage and paralysis follow the sudden insight that there is enough identity only for one, and that the other seems to have made off with it.” This identity fusion can even happen through romance or intimacy, though with similar results - “fusion with another becomes identity loss.” While intimacy can be affirming, distantiation , distancing people and forces deemed dangerous to one’s self, can also similarly be affirming. We are defined not just by what we love, but also by what we hate.
The construct of a negative identity is seemingly related. Negative identities are constructed as a backlash against either a lost or unattainable identity. Either way, ”vindictive choices of a negative identity represent, of course, a desperate attempt at regaining some mastery in a situation in which the available positive identity elements cancel each other out.” Able only to partially construct a “successful” identity, an individual might instead opt for a complete “unsuccessful” identity. This is illustrated with the following patient quote, “That people do not know how to succeed is bad enough. But the worst is that they do not know how to fail. I have decided to fail well.” Similarly, people will sometimes seek rock-bottom - “a quasi-deliberate giving in on the part of the patient to the pull of regression, a radical search for the rock-bottom” - ostensibly because the rock represents “the only firm foundation for a renewed progression.”
The dynamic tendency of identity is emphasized. The identity is “characterized by the more or less actually attained but forever to-be-revised sense of the reality of the self within social reality.” This brings to mind the “quasi-stationary equilibrium” from field theory, quoted in “Where is the Me Among the We?”. Another aspect of identity dynamism involves the striving for possible future selves, which the author calls the “ego ideal.” Defined as representing “a set of to-be-strived-for but forever not-quite-attainable ideal goals for the self,” it brings to mind the image of a donkey eternally striving for a suspended carrot.
Application
In terms of future research, it would be interesting to consider the specific stages that are passed through organizational identity formation. The author charts this (p.20), ostensibly for a person’s entire life. It may not be entirely true, but certain themes it mentions certainly seem true enough.
Just for funsies, there were some interesting quotes from G. B. Shaw…
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
“The truth is,” he concludes, “that all men are in a false position in society until they have realized their possibilities and imposed them on their neighbors. They are tormented by a continual shortcoming in themselves; yet they irritate others by a continual overweening. This discord can be resolved by acknowledged success or failure only: everyone is ill at ease until he has found his natural place, whether it be above or below his birthplace.”
”This finding of one’s place may be made very puzzling by the fact that there is no place in ordinary society for extraordinary individuals.”
“I cannot learn anything that does not interest me. My memory is not indiscriminate; it rejects and selects; and its selections are not academic.”
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