Identity crisis. Youthful identity crisis

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

During their development, each person repeatedly faces turning points, which can be accompanied by despair, resentment, helplessness, and sometimes anger. The reasons for such states may be different, but the most common is the subjective perception of the situation, in which people perceive the same events with different emotional overtones.

Psychology of crisis

The problem of finding a way out of the crisis in recent years has taken one of the leading positions in terms of importance in psychology. Scientists are not only looking for causes and ways to prevent depression, but also developing ways to prepare a person for a sharp change in the status of personal life.

Depending on the circumstances that caused stress, there are such types of it:

1. Development crisis is the difficulties associated with the transition from one completed development cycle to the next.
2. Traumatica crisis can arise as a result of sudden intense events or as a result of loss of physical he alth through illness or injury.
3. The crisis of loss or separation - manifests itself either after the death of a loved one, or with a forced long separation. This species is very stable and can last for many years. Often occurs in children whose parents are divorced. If children experience the death of their loved ones, the crisis may be aggravated by reflection on their own mortality.

The duration and intensity of each crisis state depends on the individual volitional qualities of a person and the methods of his rehabilitation.

Age crises

A feature of age-related disorders is that they have a short period and provide a normal course of personal development.

Each of the stages is associated with a change in the main activity of the subject.

1. The neonatal crisis is associated with the adaptation of the child to life outside the mother's body.
2. The crisis of 1 year is justified by the appearance of new needs in the baby and an increase in its capabilities.
3. The crisis of 3 years arises from the child's attempt to create a new kind of relationship with adults and highlight his own "I".
4. The crisis of 7 years is caused by the emergence of a new type of activity - study, and the position of a student.
5. The puberty crisis is driven by the process of puberty.
6. The crisis of 17 years, or youthful identity crisis, arises from the need for independent decisions in connection with the transition to adulthood.
7. The crisis of 30 years appears in people who feel the unfulfillment of their life plan.
8. The crisis of 40 years is possible if the problems that arose during the previous critical period are not resolved.
9. Retirement crisis arises due to a feeling of lack of demand for a person while maintaining his ability to work.

Human response to crisis

Difficulties in any of the periods lead to a violation of the emotional sphere, which can cause 3 types of reactions:

• The emergence of emotions such as indifference, longing or indifference, which may indicate the onset of a depressive state.
• The emergence of destructive feelings such as aggression, anger and pickiness.
• It is also possible to withdraw into oneself with the manifestation of feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, emptiness.

This type of reaction is called loneliness.

Youth developmental period

Before parsing the age period from 15 to 17 years, you should make sure that you understand the term "identity" accurately. Youth and crisis are practically inseparable concepts, since the circumstances that a teenager faces in this period require mastering new types of activities and forms of response to situations.

Identity is the identification of oneself with national, religious, professional groups or people around them. Thus, an identity crisis that manifests itself in adolescence means a decrease in eitherintegrity of understanding the world around us, or one's own social role.

Youth is characterized by an increase in self-control and self-regulation, which leads to vulnerability due to a critical assessment of one's own appearance or abilities. The main activity of this period is the knowledge of the surrounding world, and the main new formation is the choice of a profession.

The manifestation of an identity crisis

For a deeper understanding of what an identity crisis is, it is necessary to consider what its manifestations are during adolescence:

1. Fear of close contact with other people, self-isolation, forming only formal relationships.
2. Uncertainty in one's abilities, which manifests itself either in a complete refusal to study, or in excessive zeal for it.
3. Loss of harmony with time. It manifests itself in the fear of the future, in the desire to live only for today or aspiration only for the future, without thinking about the present.
4. Lack of an ideal "I", which leads to the search for idols and their complete copying.

Identity Crisis

According to most psychologists, the crisis of adolescence is justified by the emergence of the philosophy of consciousness. During this period, any action is accompanied by a lot of thoughts and doubts that interfere with vigorous activity.

Describing the identity crisis, Erickson noted that it is he who is decisive in the formation of personality.

Being influenced by new social and biological factors, young men determine their place in society, choose their future profession. But not only their viewschange, others also rethink their attitude to social groups. This is also justified by a significant change in the appearance and maturation of adolescents.

Only an identity crisis according to Erickson can provide the education of a whole person and create the basis for choosing a promising career in the future. If the appropriate conditions are not created for the passage of this period, the effect of rejection may occur. It manifests itself in the manifestation of hostility even to the close social environment. At the same time, the identity crisis will cause anxiety, devastation and isolation from the real world in young people.

National identity

In every social group over the past century, the crisis of national identity has become more and more pronounced. The ethnos differentiates itself according to the national character, language, values and norms of the people. This crisis can manifest itself both in an individual and in the entire population of the country.

Among the main manifestations of the crisis of national identity, the following should be highlighted:

1. The historical past is not valued. The extreme form of this manifestation is mankurtism - the denial of national symbols, faith and ideals.
2. Disappointment in state values.
3. Thirst to break tradition.
4. Distrust of government.

All of the above are caused by a number of reasons, such as the globalization of various spheres of life, the development of transport and technology, and the increasepopulation migration flows.

As a result, the identity crisis leads people to abandon their ethnic roots, and also creates conditions for the fragmentation of the nation into many identities (supranational, transnational, subnational)

The influence of the family on the formation of identity

The main guarantee of the formation of a young man's identity is the emergence of his independent position. The family plays an important role in this.

Excessive guardianship, protection or care, unwillingness to give children freedom only exacerbates their identity crisis, causing psychological dependence as a result. As a result of her appearance, young people:

• constantly demand attention in the form of approval or gratitude; in the absence of praise, they are guided by negative attention, attracting it with the help of quarrels or oppositional behavior;
• make a search for confirmation of the correctness of their actions;
• strive for bodily contact in the form of touches and holds.

When developing dependence, children remain emotionally dependent on their parents, have a passive life position. It will be difficult for them to build their own family relationships in the future.

Supporting a young person by parents should be about separating him from the family and taking full responsibility for his life.