April 6, 2009
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Identity/Existential Crisis
Identity crisis (psychology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article’s tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia’s guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (April 2008) - This article is about the psychological term. For a related concept, see midlife crisis. For other uses, see Identity crisis and personality crisis.
An identity crisis is when an individual loses a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity. The term was coined by the psychologist Erik Erikson.
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The identity
is “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.” (Erikson, 1970.)According to Erikson’s stages, the onset of the identity crisis is in the teenage
years, and only individuals who succeed in resolving the crisis will be
ready to face future challenges in life. But the identity crisis may
well be recurring, as the changing world demands us to constantly
redefine ourselves. Erikson suggested that people experience an
identity crisis when they lose “a sense of personal sameness and
historical continuity”. Given today’s rapid development in technology,
global economy, dynamics in local and world politics, one might expect
identity crises to recur more commonly now than even thirty years ago,
when Erikson formed his theory[citation needed].[edit] Seven areas
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007) If you find yourself (again) in an identity crisis, you can look at
seven areas of difficulty in which to work towards a resolution.- Time Perspective
- Can you distinguish immediate gratification from long-term goals?
Have you learned to balance between jumping at opportunities as soon as
they are presented to you and working steadily and patiently towards
your long-term goal? - Self-Certainty
- Do you feel consistent in your self-image and the image you present to others?
- Role Experimentation
- Have you tried different roles in search of the one that feels right to you?
- Anticipation of Achievement
- Do you believe that you will be successful in what you choose to do — whether your role is at the work front or home front?
- Gender Identity
- Do you feel comfortable being a male or a female, and dealing with others as such?
- Leadership polarization
- Are you able to become both a leader and a follower, whichever is called for in a given situation?
- Ideological
- Have you found a set of basic social, philosophical, or religious values that your outlook on life can be based upon?
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Existential crisis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) Existential crisis, derived from Existentialism,
is a perceived sense of harsh confrontation experienced when a human
confronts questions of existence and a change in one’s subjective
perception their relation to their world.Contents
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An existential crisis can result from:
- The sense of being alone and isolated in the world;
- A new found grasp or appreciation of one’s mortality;
- Believing that one’s life has no purpose or external meaning; or
- Awareness of one’s freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom.
Existential crisis resembles anomie (a sociological concept), the mid-life crisis is an example. Usually, an existential crisis stems from the person’s perception of existence.
Non-existential belief systems,
such as religion, astrology, and witchcraft, provide compact and
logically irrefutable (i.e. tautological) explanations for human
existence often invoking a man-made construct of one or more iterations
of a supernatural being.
A transition to the realization of the absence of fulfillment via
religious faith is one avenue to trigger suffering associated with an
existential crisis. This sudden appreciation that there is no afterlife
and, moreover, the meaning and purpose of one’s life is determined from
within, not through a irrational narrative defined by others,
inevitably leads to substantial personal growth, with the transition
through this critical confrontation with the ‘existential’ world a
necessary step of maturationCognitive dissonance occurs when the man or woman faces
the paradox of believing his or her life important, whilst perceiving
that human existence is meaningless and without purpose. The person’s
resolving said paradox results in the existential crisis. For many, a
resolution to this crisis is the abandonment of religious beliefs in
favor of a rational, non-superstitious relationship to the objective
world just confronted. Analogously, existentialism posits that a person
can and does define the meaning and purpose of his or her life, hence must choose
to resolve the crisis of existence. The terminal synthesis of the
crisis most often results in the appreciation of the only true treasure
in the world: the inherent self. Thus the resolution produces an
insight to the core moral and ethical values intrinsic to our species,
made far stronger by shaping in the external world, and now with the
strength, judgment and confidence of character to resist the imposition
of codes of others. The rejection of religion as the product of
existential crises is clearly consistent with such fundamental
questioning.Existential crisis is often provoked by a significant event in the
person’s life — marriage, separation, major loss, the death of a loved
one; a life-threatening experience; psycho-active drug use; adult
children leaving home; reaching a personally-significant age (turning
30, turning 40, etc.), et cetera. Usually, it provokes the sufferer’s introspection about personal mortality, thus revealing the psychological repression of said awareness.[edit] Handling existential crises
There is no one given therapeutic method in modern psychology known to coerce a person out of existential despair[citation needed] (the issue is seldom, if at all, addressed from a medical standpoint). Peter Wessel Zapffe, a Norwegian philosopher provided in his work The Last Messiah,
a four-fold route that he believed all self-concious beings use in
order to cope with the inherent indifference and absurdity of
existence, made up of Isolation, Anchoring, Distraction, and Sublimation:- 1. Isolation is “a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling”.
- 2. Anchoring is the “fixation of points within, or
construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness”. The
anchoring mechanism provides individuals a value or an ideal that
allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. Zapffe
also applied the anchoring principle to society, and stated “God, the
Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the
future” are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.
- 3. Distraction is when “one limits attention to the
critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions”.
Distraction focuses all of one’s energy on a task or idea to prevent
the mind from turning in on itself.
- 4. Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from
negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individual distances him /
herself and looks at their existence from an aesthetic point of view.
(e.g. writers, poets, painters.) Zapffe himself pointed out that his
produced works were the product of sublimation.
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