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3.21 Ego-identity

Erikson points out the need for a sense of continuity of
identity. Ego-identity is the sense of maintaining an inner
sameness and continuity that is also recognised by others.
Erikson maintains that adolescents are primarily concerned with
consolidating social roles - sometimes being

...morbidly, often curiously, preoccupied with what
they appear to be in the eyes of others compared
with what they feel they are. The sense of ego-
identity is the accrued confidence that one’s own
ability to maintain inner sameness and continuity,
one’s ego, in a psychological sense, is matched by
the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others (Erikson, 1959:89)

Ego identity is thus not an individual process. It depends upon
recognition by, others. An individual locates himself in a community.

Erikson (1966:148) sees identity as a continuing process of
growth into mature years, a process that presupposes a community:

Identity is a matter of growth, both personal and
communal. For a mature psychological identity
presupposes a community of people whose traditional
values have become significant to the growing person even
as his growth and his gifts assume relevance for them.

Personal identity is in accord with group identity. Erikson
(1977. 212) holds that

...the growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of
reality from the awareness that his individual way
of mastering experiences (his ego-synthesis) is a
successful variance of a group identity and is in
accord with its space-time and life plan.

The young person looks for continuity of regard, but for this
he needs continuity in his own life. De Levita, developing Erikson’s
approach, characterises this maintenance of inner sameness and
continuity, and its recognition by others as functional constancy.

My feeling of being the same is the consciousness
of standing in relation always to the same world.

I am the same because my name, address, profession,
are the same (de Levita, 1965:58).

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