Identity: Youth and Crisis

by Erik H. Erikson

Identity: Youth and Crisis collects Erik H. Erikson's major essays on topics originating in the concept of the adolescent identity crisis. Identity, Erikson writes, is an unfathomable as it is all-pervasive. It deals with a process that is located both in the core of the individual and in the core of the communal culture. As the culture changes, new kinds of identity questions arise―Erikson comments, for example, on issues of social protest and changing gender roles that were particular to the 1960s.

Representing two decades of groundbreaking work, the essays are not so much a systematic formulation of theory as an evolving report that is both clinical and theoretical. The subjects range from "creative confusion" in two famous lives―the dramatist George Bernard Shaw and the philosopher William James―to the connection between individual struggles and social order. "Race and the Wider Identity" and the controversial "Womanhood and the Inner Space" are included in the collection.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Sociology, Psychoanalysis, Parenting, Education

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Erik Erikson was a German-born American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychosocial development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T. Erikson, is a noted American sociologist.

Although Erikson lacked even a bachelor's degree, he served as a professor at prominent institutions such as Harvard and Yale.

Reviews

[Peiman E iran · Rating 3 out of 5]

‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، همانطور که میدانید، مسئلهٔ "شخصیت" و "هویّت" یکی از مسائلِ مهم و اساسی در علم روانشناسی و روانکاوی میباشد که زنده یاد «اریک اریکسون» در این زمینه زحماتِ بسیار زیادی کشید که یادِ او همیشه گرامی باد
‎عزیزانم، «اریکسون» در این کتابِ ارزشمند، از بحران های شخصیتی سخن گفته است، امّا آنطور که باید و شاید همچون اندیشمندِ گرانقدر «فروید» به ریشه یابی بحران ها نپرداخته است... در جامعهٔ صنعتیِ امروزه، انسانها به نوعی به اشياء تبدیل شده اند.. حال این سؤال ایجاد میشود که اشياء شخصیت دارند و یا شخصیت ندارند؟!؟ آیا اتومبیل ساختِ فلان کارخانه که محصول امسال است، با اتومبیلِ ساختِ همان کارخانه که محصولِ سالها پیش است، تفاوتی ندارد؟؟ اشياء میتوانند همسان و یا متفاوت باشند.. امّا باید در نظر داشته باشیم که زمانی که ما از شخصیت سخن میگوییم، از کیفیتی سخن میگوییم که مربوط به انسان است، و نه مربوط به اشياء
‎امروزه انگیزهٔ عمدهٔ "شخصیت کشی" و یا "شخصیت زدایی" فرصت طلبی هایِ مربوط به پیشرفت و ترقی در جامعهٔ صنعتی است.. زیرا زندگی در جامعه تمایل به آن دارد که انسان خودش را به عنوانِ یک "چیز" و یا یک "شئ" تجربه کند، احساسِ شخصیت به صورتِ پدیدهٔ نادری در می آید... امّا مسئله زمانی خطرناک و بغرنج میشود که از وجودِ یک شخصیتِ ناآگاه نیز، نباید غافل باشیم
‎در حالی که برخی از مردم در جامعهٔ امروز آگاهانه خود را به "چیزها" و "اشياء" تبدیل کرده اند، امّا ناخودآگاه شخصیتِ خویش را هنوز گُم نکرده اند... این امر به آن دلیل است که هنوز فراگردهایِ اجتماعی نتوانسته اند انسان ها را کاملاً تبدیل به "چیز" و "شئ" نمایند
‎دوستانِ عزیزم، به طورِ کلی دو نوع شخصیت برای انسانها میتوان تعریف کرد... یکی انسانهایی که «بودن» زندگی آنها را تشکیل میدهد و دیگری انسانهایی که «داشتن» زندگی آنها را تشکیل میدهد... انسانی که «داشتن» زندگی وی را تشکیل میدهد، وجودش را به صورتِ یک «خود» تجربه میکند و احساسِ شخصیتش، احساسِ «خود شخصیتی» میباشد، طبیعتاً میخواهد وجودش را و همچنین تن و حافظه و مال و املاک و عقاید و عواطفش را مصون نگاه دارد... چنین انسانی بطور مداوم در حالتِ دفاع در مقابلِ هرکس و یا هر نوع تجربه ای است که بخواهد دوام و صلابتِ هستیِ مومیائی شدهٔ او را به خطر اندازد
‎و امّا انسانی که «بودن» زندگیِ وی را تشکیل میدهد، خود را در معرضِ آسیب دیدگیِ شخصیتی قرار میدهد. هیچ چیز متعلق به او نیست، جز اینکه او هست، زیراکه زنده است... امّا از لحظه ای که او احساسِ فعال بودن و تمرکزِ خود را از دست میدهد، در خطر این است که نه چیزی داشته باشد و نه کسی را برایِ خویش داشته باشد... امّا این شخص، این خطرِ بزرگ را با آمادگی داشتن و بیداری و زنده بودنِ دائمی خویش و افکارِ خویش، میتواند دفع کند
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‎دوستانِ خردگرا، این موضوع، بسیار پیچیده است، لذا در ریویوهایی که در آینده در موردِ این مبحث مینویسم، سعی میکنم ساده تر و روان تر در موردِ «شخصیت» و «هویّت» توضیح دهم
‎امیدوارم این ریویو با آنکه سخت فهم بود، امّا در حدّ خودش برایتان مفید بوده باشه
‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»

[Paul Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was the first book by Erik Erikson that I have read and I was very impressed. It was written in the US in the sixties and since it engages with what was going on at the times (youth alienation, consumption capitalism, racial issues, etc), it can seem a little old fashioned. However, I think there is a lot of wisdom in this book. Erikson explores the many dimensions of the identity issue in a deep and fascinating way. It is far from being a standard piece of psychoanalytic writing insofar as Erikson is very concerned with social, cultural and historical issues, indeed, one of the things I think he is trying to do is to link psychoanalytical insights with issues beyond the individual and the nuclear family. Having said that, there are also some interesting perspectives on psychoanalysis - I found his view on childhood and the different stages of childhood (including versions of the traditional Freudian libidinal stages) very interesting and although as a man I hesitate to say it, I thought his post-Freudian essay on Womanhood and the Inner Space was very powerful. So overall I am really glad I read this book and will definitely read some more Erikson in due course to see how his other stuff compares.

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone put me onto Erikson after noticing that I, too, speak about “life cycle archetypes” in my teachings about archetypal character arcs (although in a totally different way from Erikson). Written in the late 1960s, I feel the book has weathered the test of time well and offers deep insight not only into its contemporary generation, but also into the timeless struggles of the human growth arc into individuation. The prose is dense (he apologizes to his editor wife in the acknowledgements), but very juicy and worth the read.

[Kristin]

“Identity:Youth and Crisis” by Erik Erickson. Didn’t understand half of it.

I deemed it unratable in the end, but considering the only other books I have declined to rate are the Bible and a book edited by a friend, being unratable isn’t a condementation either.

As a piece of literature, it left much to be desired. Erickson’s verbose writing at times saps all meaning from the text. You get lost in it like weeds. Also, speaking of meaning, don’t read this in search of any conclusive thoughts. The author admits as much on the last page.

In the first few pages, Erickson aptly warns to read this with historical context in mind (originally published in 1968). Some of the verbiage taken out of context (or indeed even in context) would absolutely be offensive by modern standards. Hiis musings on LGBT issues are especially out of sync with today’s views. Ironically, he would probably deeply offend both sides of the political spectrum. For conservatives, he would be too dismissive, which would create alarm in parents. On the other side, he would also be too dismissive, which could offend one’s very identity. Perhaps the fact that he would offend everyone says just as much about the psychological intelligentsia of the 1960s as it does today’s political climate.

Finally, some of his ideas were just bizarre to think of. I have never read a book with so much painstaking thought in regards to penises. So that was also interesting.

Quite frankly, I was going to rate this book as two or maybe three stars if it had not been for the final two chapters. Before reading this book, I read another called “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado-Perez, published in 2019. “Invisible Women” challenged my way of thinking about my own gender and what being successful as a woman should look like. I was impressed that Erickson expressed many of the same thoughts in 1968. Also, his final chapter on race reminded me of arguments from “How to Be an Antiracist”. In those chapters, I realized Erickson had pondered some of the same issues I have 60 years later and even came to similar conclusions. And it is for moments like that, where I find connection with someone across time and space, it is those moments that motivate me to read.

Honestly, I would not consider this a great piece of literature, and I would never recommend it to a friend (and very few foes). Then again, it was so prescient in other regards that a bad or even average rating doesn’t seem fair either. In the end, it was something.

[Melike Ilkay · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must read for psychology majors.

[Bobbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the development of an identity. Erikson lays out the crux of his argument which would later develop how we think about identity in psychology. Amazing book.

[Douglass Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erik Erikson begins his book, Identity Youth and Crisis, by quoting one of his brilliant but opaque instructors, at the end of a series of lectures, “Now have I understood myself?” It is an appropriate question for a book full of new and challenging ideas. Erikson tells the reader that this book is a collection of revised manuscripts that he had previously published as individual articles. He rationalizes: “Single essays and papers are always ahead of themselves in suggestiveness and behind in firmness of established ground. Not until one tries to make a book of them can one really know what each meant to deal with, and what they have gradually come to mean together.”
I found some of the essays more useful than others, and all of them required my complete attention to follow this brilliant psychoanalyst’s reasoning. Here are some of my key takeaways, from several of the essays:
Prologue
• “The term identity crisis was first used, if I remember correctly, for a specific clinical purpose in the Mt. Zion Veterans’ Rehabilitation Clinic during the Second World War, a national emergency which permitted psychiatric workers of different persuasions and denominations… to work together harmoniously…. Most of our patients had neither been ‘shellshocked’ nor become malingerers, but had through the exigencies of war lost a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity. They were impaired in that central control over themselves for which, in the psychological scheme, only the inner agency of the ego could be held responsible. Therefore, I spoke of a loss of ego identity. Since then, we have recognized the same central disturbance in severely conflicted young people whose sense of confusion is due, rather to a war within themselves, and in confused rebels and destructive delinquents who war on their society… “
Allow me to emphasize that observations from World War II combat veterans were the inspiration for the concept of an identity crisis. One of the many contributions of the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System to medical (including psychiatry) knowledge.
• “… as always has been the case in psychiatry, what was first recognized as a common dynamic pattern of a group of severe disturbances (such as the hysterias of the turn of the twentieth century) revealed itself later to be a pathological aggravation, and undue prolongation of, or regression to, a normative crisis belonging to a particular stage of individual development. Thus have we learned to ascribe a normative identity crisis to the age of adolescence and young adulthood.”
Again, Erikson emphasizes, akin to Brene Brown years later, that his (and Freud’s) primary source of ideas was from interviews of his (their) patients. Pathography – patient narratives of illness.
Foundations in Observation
• “Students of society and history… blithely continue to ignore the simple fact that all individuals are born by mothers; that everybody was once a child; that people began in their nurseries; and that society consists of generations in the process of developing from children into parents, destined to absorb the historical changes of their lifetimes and to continue to make history for their descendants.”
• “… the growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience, his ego synthesis, is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its life plan… the coincidence of physical mastery and cultural meaning… contribute to a realistic self-esteem. By no means only a narcissistic extension of infantile omnipotence, this self-esteem grows into a conviction that the ego is capable of integrating effective steps toward a tangible collective future, that is a well-organized ego within a social reality… called ego identity.”
Based upon his studies of school children and other healthy children, Erikson and his wife Joan made the observations that underlie his psychosocial stages of normal development. Failure to resolve the conflict of each stage can set up the maturing individual for aggravation, prolongation, and/ or regression which can become pathological (lead to an illness that causes one to become a patient).
The Lifecycle: Epigenesis of Identity
• “We may speak of the identity crisis as the psychosexual aspect of adolescing…”
• “Let us start from Freud’s far-reaching discovery that neurotic conflict is not very different in content from ‘normative’ conflicts which every child must live through in his childhood, and the residues which every adult carries with him in the recesses of his personality. For man, in order to remain psychologically alive, constantly re-resolves these conflicts just as his body combats the encroachments of physical deterioration.”
• “Marie Jahoda’s definition (of health): a healthy person actively masters his environment, shows a unity of personality, and is able to perceive the world and himself correctly…”
• Epigenetic principle, derived from the growth of an embryo in utero… “anything that grows has a ground plan each part arises at the proper rate and sequence…”
Identity Confusion in Life History (‘healthy’) and Case History (‘patient’)
• “An optimal sense of identity… is experienced merely as a sense of psychosocial well-being. Its more 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.”
• “Pathography remains the traditional source of psychoanalytic insight.”
Toward Contemporary Issues: Youth
• “In youth, ego strength emerges from the mutual confirmation of individual and community…”
• “In no other stage of the lifecycle… are the promise of finding oneself and the threat of losing oneself so closely allied.”
• “… the test of what you produce is the care that it inspires.”
Building on the eight stages of psychosocial development that he presented in Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson introduced and/ or emphasized several ideas in Identity Youth and Crisis:
• Ego is the place within our mind where conflict is resolved, and inner, or psychic, identity (I, self) is developed. This is in contrast to much contemporary usage of the term ego to connote selfish and/ or self-absorbed.
• Psychosocial: inner and outer; Erikson extended Freud’s insights about our inner world to include our developmental growth in finding our place among other humans; the difficulty in integrating these two realities can be a part of autism, for example.
• Normative; usual, average, or ‘normal’, observed among healthy subjects; as opposed to unusual, pathological, or observed primarily among patients.
• crisis is a developmental stage marked by psychic conflict resolutions;
• personal (or ego) identity is the ultimate developmental goal of sequentially completing these stages;
• the identity crisis is a specific function of adolescence, where the conflict is establishing one’s identity versus identity confusion.
Erikson built on Freud’s ideas of intrapsychic conflict between wishes (id) and constraints (super-ego) in the evolving personality or ego; and the idea that many mental health pathologies are often aggravations, prolongations, or regressions to a normative crisis: unresolved conflicts or unsuccessfully passed stages of development.
Identity Youth and Crisis is an important addition to the study of normal and abnormal human psychology. As with all of Erik Erikson’s work, be ready to look things up, reread, and study. It is not for the faint of heart or mind, but I have found it to be well worth the effort.

[Frrobins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so happy to find this at my used bookstore. I'd read brief synopses of Erik Erikson's work and stages of development as a psychology student but this was the first time I actually read his work. And I was surprised at how steeped in Freudian psychosexual stages of development it was. I had always gotten the impression that Erik Erikson's work was a break from Freud.

That said, I thought the Freudian concepts of the superego, ego and id were better integrated with Erikson's observations then the psychosexual stages. I'd always thought of the Erikson stages in terms of attachment theory. From what I can tell, this book was written before the advent of attachment theory and apparently when research into attachment theory came out Erikson embraced it. Basically this meant that I found Erikson's observations fascinating and his conclusions correct, but his reasoning flawed because it relied on Freud's psychosexual stages of development for an explanation.

I was also surprised by how theoretical the book was until the final two chapters, which were the first chapters to discuss some of Erikson's research in detail. I found them to be the most grounded and accessible chapters. As a feminist I was interested in what he would say about women and their identity formation especially because of his embrace of Freudian ideas, but he was critical of the idea of penis envy and pointed out that women are not defunct men but have internal reproductive organs that men do not have and because of this do not feel as though we are missing a penis because we have a womb, etc and overall his approach to gender is one that I think we need a return to.

I also found Erikson rather prescient in terms of the effect of technology on identity formation. "Ideologies in the past have also contained an ethical corrective, but a new ethics must eventually transcend the alliance of ideology and technology, for the great question will be how man, on ethical and generational grounds, will limit the use of technological expansion even where it might, for a while, enhanced prestige and profit."

As I read, I realized Erikson, who lived through two world wars and had memories of the atomic bomb, has a perspective that many of us today does not have and I fear that respect for the destructive potential of our technology is wanning to the point that we are becoming careless and thinking too much in terms of short term benefits.

This was a rather technical read. You will need to be familiar with Freudian concepts to make sense of it. But I think any serious student of psychology should invest the time and energy to do so.

[Herrholz Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of what I read here was unintelligible to me. It was at times as though I were reading a different language to the English in which this edition is published. Also likely is that this book is aimed more at the academic than the lay person like me – a firm grounding in the subject may be an advantage. I however persevered because the idea of identity strikes me as being important in the world of the psyche and I was determined to extract any clues I could from the book – which I did on occasion. One such occasion was where the author spoke about the possible differences in experience which might arise from different languages – in this case German and English. The identity of an English person is necessarily different from that of a German not only because of the obvious differences in experience of the idea of nationhood, but the very feeling of a language has a profound effect on the way words are perceived and also uttered.
Another area I find fascinating is that of one’s place in history. Every generation has a different experience of the world due to progress in technology and politics and economics but to name a few. We therefore are constantly trying to make sense of the identities of our parents and our own children.
There is a chapter entitled ‘Womanhood and the inner space’ in which the author recounts observations amongst groups of small children and where it is observed that the female members tend to concentrate in a more inward looking safe space manner, in contrast to the boys who behave in a more outward adventurous way. This chapter in particular may appear controversial when viewed from today’s modern anti-discriminatory perspective but is interesting nevertheless.
The final chapter deals with identity and discrimination against black people. This leads on from the preceding chapter where the difference in boys and girls was touched upon. The usual male influences experienced in societies without pronounced racial prejudices and where the male strengths are allowed to flourish, are inhibited in a society which exhibits racial prejudice and therefore constricts this male power and influence.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways this book is a fascinating exploration of the complexity of identity formation from a forwardly thinking intersectional perspective. The banal but truly deep point that every person went through the process of baby-hood and childhood and has thus constructed a "self" from a starting point of total constructivist naivety is huge. It's mind-boggling to consider how strange and thorough our collective amnesia about the experience of childhood is. It's staggering to consider how thoroughly the ideologies and logical systems we develop supplant a more direct phenomenological way of being. I'd even say that if you can filter out the grueling Freudian psycho-babble the ideas about biological gender and race are inspiring in their anti-essentialist points of view. This book was written in the context of second wave feminism and before critical or intersectional racial analysis, after all. I get the impression that Erikson was or at least wanted to be a decent man.

But the problem is the book is not very friendly to the reader. The psychology is clearly dated and the language itself is so needlessly opaque. Some degree of vagueness and interpretation is unavoidable, of course, but there is virtue in clarity. I guess I (a pleasure reader) might not have been the intended audience, though.

All in all, I come away from this book with a deeper appreciation and compassion for the crises we all go through. Being a human person navigating this weird, confusing world is a dramatic and challenging thing. Life is so beautiful and complex.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has eight chapters and addresses issues related to identity in many ways including in the last two chapters on identity issues focused on women and race (being black). The chapters are largely based on essays presented over the years from 1946 - 1967. The one exception is the opening chapter that was based on the transcript of a workshop. Written more for academics and assuming that one was familiar with Erikson theory of development and personality.

It hued more toward traditional psychosexual development than I had expected given how Erikson's ideas are presented in Intro to Psychology texts, Developmental Psychology texts, and Theories of Personality texts.

[Yinxue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Completely riddled writing until chapter 4, when it started to make amazing sense, only to return to jumbled mess again from chapter 6 onwards. It may just be me not on his wavelength. But seriously, how hard is it to talk straight?

[Pradnya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The multiple insights about identity formation are quite interesting. He expertly brings out the fluid nature of identity formation.

[Pumuckl Leonardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

saved my thesis, gg granpa!

[Olivia Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erikson, and his theories, continue to be ubiquitous in even the most disconnected schools of psychology (e.g. psychodynamic thought and social-cognitive work). This book, in particular, inspired my master’s thesis (to emphasize the impact on me as a reader) and delves into the rich and fascinating field of adolescence and how we develop during the transition to adulthood.

[Doni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why haven't we progressed any further than this?

[Lauren Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the concept of a defining crisis in each psychosocial stage. A great read.

[Whoof]

cool

[EvaLovesYA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brugt til speciale om Young Adult-litteratur (2017)

[Alejandra Rivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, great book! A must read at least for psychoanalysts...

[Jim Husen]

Wow, a tour de force on issues of identity. An extremely rewarding but difficult read which I will want to read again at some point on account of how rich the book is in content.