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Friday, December 17, 2010

identity crisis



"Identity crisis is the failure to achieve ego identity during adolescence"
During this stage of adolescence, we are faced with physical growth, sexual maturation, and integrating our ideas of ourselves and about what others think of us.We form our self-image and endure the task of resolving the crisis of our basic ego identity.Successful resolution of the crisis depends on one’s progress through previous developmental stages, centering on issues such as trust, autonomy, and initiative.“Those who fail to achieve a cohesive identity-who experience an identity crisis-will exhibit a confusion of roles,” not knowing who they are, where they belong, or where they want to go. This sort of unresolved crisis leaves individuals struggling to “find themselves.” They may go on to seek a negative identity, which may involve crime or drugs or the inability to make defining choices about the future. “The basic strength that should develop during adolescence is fidelity, which emerges from a cohesive ego identity". They often seem to have no idea who or what they are, where they belong or where they want to go. They may withdraw from normal life, not taking action or acting as they usually would at work, in their marriage or at school. They may even turn to negative activities, such as crime or drugs, as a way of dealing with identity crisis. To someone having an identity crisis, it is more acceptable to them to have a negative identity than none at all.
Fidelity is known to encompass sincerity, genuineness and a sense of duty in our relationships with other people. Identity as "a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. As a quality of unself-conscious living, this can be gloriously obvious in a young person who has found himself as he has found his communality. In him we see emerge a unique unification of what is irreversibly given—that is, body type and temperament, giftedness and vulnerability, infantile models and acquired ideals—with the open choices provided in available roles, occupational possibilities, values offered, mentors met, friendships made, and first sexual encounters."