Identity Development

Identity development is the complex process by which people come to develop a sense and understanding of themselves within the context of cultural demands and social norms. Identity development has been seen historically as a primary developmental task of adolescence—the transition from dependency in childhood to increasing responsibility for one's own needs, interests, drives, aspirations, and desires in adulthood. This transition involves a cognitive reorganization in how youth think about themselves in relation to others as they gain physical, social, and psychological maturity. However, societal and historical shifts have complicated the developmental markers for adolescence, causing the demarcation of adolescence to become difficult to define. Additionally, despite being associated with adolescence, identity development is an ongoing process that continues throughout adulthood where one forms an identity within a larger and transitional cultural context. For example, changes in the body due to puberty, shifts in sociocultural context due to war or the civil rights movement, changes in individual role responsibility due to parenthood or divorce, and changes in cognitive processing due to aging support a life-span view of identity formation. Moreover, cultural factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation also affect the identity formation that take place on the way to and through adulthood.

Historically, psychological theories of identity development date back to Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development, which describe underlying motivations and impulses that shape the sense of self. However, Erich Fromm suggests that identity is more fluid than characterized by Freud and involves an awareness of oneself as a separate individual, in addition to a sense of agency and self-efficacy in one's own actions in the context of social group norms. Fromm's view also supports a view where identity formation begins prior to adolescence, when the development of a sense of self that is separate from parental figures begins and extends into adulthood, when agency and a sense of self-efficacy may be challenged with new life roles. These differences between Freud's and Fromm's seminal theories have led to two divergent views of identity formation in contemporary theories: the structural stage models of identity development and the more fluid and nonlinear sociocultural models of identity development.