Discuss psychological insights into the development of identity in adolescence

Authors Avatar

Discuss psychological insights into the development of identity in adolescence

Erickson like Freud used the idea of crisis during stages of on individual’s life that needed to be resolved before moving on to the next stage. If these crises were not resolved development could not precede normality. Erickson’s ideas about adolescents stemmed from his observations of emotionally disturbed adolescents during therapy.

Erickson (1950, 1968, and 1969) also argued that adolescents typically experienced identity diffusion, which involves a strong sense of uncertainty. They need to achieve a sense of identity, which can be defined as “a feeling of being at home in ones body, a sense of knowing where one is going and a n inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who cannot” (Erickson 1950) Adolescents find it hard to do this because they are undergoing rapid biological and social changes, and they need to take major decisions in almost all areas of life (e.g. future career). In other words, adolescents typically face an identity crisis, because they do not know who they are, or where they are going.

Join now!

Thus Erickson seemed to think that it was almost essential for adolescents to go through an identity crisis in order to resolve the identity issue and move on to the experienced uncertainty has four major components:

  1. intimacy
  2. diffusion of time
  3. diffusion of industry
  4. negotiating identity

Erickson (1969) assumed that there are some important differences between males and females in identity development: females develop a sense of identity later than males, allegedly because they realize that their identity and social status will depend very much on the type of man they choose to marry. It ...

This is a preview of the whole essay