FORMING IDENTITY
The life of human beings begins right from conception. After birth, the first major move is to give the newborn identity. That is the identity of being male or female. However, the major changes occur in later stages of individual life, referred to as identity formation. Identity formation refers to the development of individual personality in a particular life stage where individual possess their own features and characteristics that he/she is recognized with by other people. In psychology, identity formation is defined as a mental representation of a person to define who he or she is. Identity is composed of personal uniqueness and continuity different from other people. To understand identity formation, this paper will rely largely on Erickson and Marcia’s theories on identity.
Erickson’s study about identity formation relied on his keen study of individual development from birth to adulthood and developed the theory of developmental stages. According to Erikson’s theory, Identity formation of an individual begins at childhood and gains much prominence when he or she is at the adolescence stage (Best, 2017). At adolescence stage, individual is faced by physical growth, maturation of sexual organs, and impending career choices. Thus, the adolescent is required to accomplish and integrate prior experiences and other characteristics to achieve a stable identity. At this stage, individuals are always confused and temporarily unstable a condition coined by Erikson as `identity crisis’ since individual struggles in making choices of the available alternatives.
The problem of “identity crisis” means that the youth is unable to achieve the absolute ego as an identity during adolescence. During this stage, a series of internal conflicts exist. According to Erikson, the manner in which an individual will resolve this crisis will determine his or her future development (Best, 2017). Erikson identifies two crises that exist within the life of adolescence. These are the crisis of identity versus confusion and intimacy versus isolation. In the first crisis, Erikson sees it as a struggle between being unique and, at the same time “fitting in.” (Hetherington, 2018) Therefore, the youth will resolve this by determining the perception he wants to create among people. Solving this crisis is essential as it will become an emotionally mature adult. The second crisis is isolation versus intimacy (Best, 2017). The crisis happens when one is unable to balance between giving support and love and receiving the same. Therefore, the youth need to resolve how he relates with family and members of the society to rediscover his social identity. By solving this problem, the individual will form the adult identity.
While Erikson’s theory of identity formation revolves around the young solving “identity crisis”, a different perspective was used by James Marcia, who interviewed lots of people. According to Marcia, identity formation can be based on occupation and ideology (Marcia, 2013). For occupation, individual identity will depend on the major one play in society. Occupation here means being a parent, a celebrity, or a student. From adolescence, one may become a parent and take the role of being a parent, as a result, he or she will have formed the adult identity. The second base for identity is ideology. According to Marcia, this is determined by the level at which a person has developed fundamental beliefs in topics like politics and religion. Under this, an individual will be identified on what he beliefs (Hetherington, 2018). For instance, you are either religious or not. You are either involved in politics or not. Marcia used these two approaches to identify the current identities of individuals.
Similar to Erikson, Marcia found that youths often find themselves in an “identity crisis” as well. According to Marcia, youth may fail to achieve adult identity because they are unable to resolve problems during “identity crisis’’ or they did not face any of these problems (Marcia, 2013). However, if these problems exist, J. Marcia identified four different approaches that most adolescents use to overcome identity formation challenges. According to Marcia, these approaches are identity-achieved, identity-foreclosed, identity-diffused, and moratorium (Marcia, 2013). For identity-achieve, they identify the crisis, confront it, and resolve the problem of an identity crisis. The identity-foreclosed, they make commitments of forming their identity, but they do not consider the alternatives. The identity-diffused they do not consider making choices for their future where they are unable to choose commitments for their careers or people to associate with. Lastly, the moratorium will not make any commitments and will remain with an unsolved crisis making them never find themselves.
According to both Erikson and Marcia, forming an identity largely depend on how an individual will deal with difficulties and challenges occurring at the adolescent stage. For Erikson, becoming unique and overcoming fitting in and as well fighting isolation over intimacy will determine the formation of an adult identity (Hetherington, 2018). Being unique and being able to give love and support and receiving the same as well will lead to the formation of adult identity. According to Marcia, a similar case happens in that those adolescents who are able to face, confront, and solve the “identity crisis. (Marcia, 2013) Will definitely acquire the adult identity. This matters since failure to solve these crises will make one unable to find himself forever.
References
Best, A. (2017). Youth Identity Formation: Contemporary Identity Work. Sociology Compass, 5(10), 908–922. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00411.x
Hetherington, K. (2018). Identity Formation, Space, and Social Centrality. Theory, Culture & Society, 13(4), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276496013004002
Marcia, J. E. (2013). Afterword. Identity, 13(3), 281–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2013.799473