Identity Case

Identity

DEFINITIONS

Identity lies behind the answer one gives to the questions, "Who are you? What do you like doing? What do you value?" and "Whom do you love?" Identity enables one to move with direction in life, and identity gives meaning to one's existence as one interacts with the surrounding context. Subjectively, identity is a feeling of being "at home" in one's self, and a feeling of personal endurance across time and space. Identity is also a structural configuration, enabling one to synthesize important identifications from childhood and integrate them into a framework for interpreting one's life experiences that is uniquely one's own. Identity is a behavior, evidenced by the ability to make commitments to certain vocations, leisure pursuits, relationships, beliefs, and values within the social surrounds. Identity can be an act of enormous creativity.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

As a concept, "identity" was first used by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1963) to describe an entity that seemed to be missing in the lives of some World War II veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Erikson noted that these men had a sense of who they were, a sense of personal identity, but that they subjectively experienced the loss of a sense of selfsameness and continuity in their lives. "There was a central disturbance in what I then started to call ego identity" (Erikson, 1963, p. 42). Through its absence, Erikson was able to delineate identity's central elements, bringing them into clearer relief. He also popularized the term "identity crisis."

ERIKSON'S NOTIONS OF IDENTITY'S ELEMENTS AND FUNCTIONS

Some of identity's important elements and functions as identified by Erikson are as follows: its providing of a sense of continuity and self-sameness; its psychosocial nature with biological, psychological, and social components; its process of formation; its resolution on an identity achievement-to-diffusion continuum; and the meaning of an identity crisis. Perhaps most important for Erikson was identity's provision of a sense of continuity in one's life. In different places and in different social situations, one still retains a sense of being the same person--as others come to know and be known by this individual. Identity for the holder as well as the beholder ensures a reasonably predictable sense of continuity and social order across multiple settings. Identity, to Erikson, has three components: the biological, the psychological, and the social. Thus, identity results from the interaction of one's biological givens (such as gender, biological capacities and limitations) with one's psychological needs, interests, defenses, talents, and personality features, and