“Know Thyself” is an ancient Greek maxim, yet it is certainly relevant to our modern-day struggles to understand who we are -- and where we are going. According to Erik Erikson (1985), the primary task of adolescence is to resolve the Identity-Role Confusion crisis. In other words, we may begin to explore our answer to the ‘Who Am I?’ question during the teen years. Contrary to Erikson’s theory though, a good deal of contemporary research indicates that identity crises continue through early, middle, and late adulthood (Anthis, 2011; Kroger, 2006; Newton & Stewart, 2010; 2013).
So how can we best answer this question of who we are, no matter our age? My own work (Anthis, 2014) indicates that doing so may be a product of how well we have resolved prior stages’ crises, such as whether or not we left infancy with more hope than withdrawal, after struggling with the Trust-Mistrust crisis of that stage. That is, if we experienced more trusting behaviors than distrustful behaviors from our caregivers as a baby, we will possess buoyancy in the face of minor difficulties or major reversals of fortune; if we experienced more distrustful behaviors than trusting behaviors from our caregivers as a baby, we will be riddled with a sense of surrender in the face of minor difficulties or major reversals of fortune.
So according to Erikson (1985), “hope” or optimism is the ego strength or virtue we derive from resolving successfully the Trust-Mistrust crisis of infancy, and “withdrawal” or depression is the core pathology we are left with after not resolving successfully the Trust-Mistrust crisis of infancy. The ego strength we derive from resolving the Identity-Role Confusion crisis of adolescence is “fidelity” or being true and consistent to both oneself and to others, and the core pathology we are left with after not resolving the Identity-Role Confusion crisis of adolescence is “role repudiation” or the inability to integrate and synthesize our different selves in a whole personality. This is what Carl Jung (1957) would refer to as the “Self” rather than merely that of which we are conscious, i.e., the “Ego.”
The hierarchical principle in Erikson’s (1985) theory posits that acquiring the ego strengths of prior life stages makes resolution of later stages easier. For example, possessing the ego strength of hope after experiencing more trust than mistrust certainly makes resolution of the Intimacy-Isolation crisis during the early adulthood stage, and acquisition of its corresponding ego strength of “love,” easier. This is not to say that one cannot love or be loved if s/he experienced more distrust than trust during infancy, but the imbalance certainly makes later crises more difficult to resolve.
So ego strengths serve, in a way, as lower-level college courses that are prerequisites for upper-level courses. By analogy, failure to really comprehend Statistics Methods in Psychology may make understanding Experimental Research Methods much more difficult than it need be. And indeed, this is what my own research has shown, at least in terms of our career identity (Anthis, 2014).
That is, my research data show that the greater an individual’s possession of all the ego strengths prior to adolescence, the greater his/her resolution of career identity concerns, such as exploring a range of career options in-breath, exploring the details of one particular career in-depth, and making a commitment to a career (Anthis, 2014).
Exploring one’s career options in breadth, or learning about as wide a range of careers as possible, is best predicted by achieving the ego strength of “competence” that is associated with the Industry-Inferiority crisis of late childhood. In other words, “Know Thyself”, i.e., when we make the effort to discover where our talents lie and use the skills and abilities at which we are most adept, we will be better able to explore which career suits us best.
References
Anthis, K. (2014). Hope, will, purpose, competence, and fidelity: Ego strengths as precursors to career identity. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 14(2), 153-162. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15283488.2014.892001#preview
Anthis, K. (2011). The role of conflict in continuity and change: Life events associated with identity development in racially/ethnically diverse women. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 11(4), 333-347. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15283488.2011.613588
Erikson, E. (1985). The life cycle completed. New York, NY: Norton. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Life-Cycle-Completed/
Jung, C. G. (1957). The undiscovered self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9508.html
Kroger, J. (2006). Identity Development: Adolescence through adulthood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book226125/reviews
Newton, N. & Stewart, A. J. (2010). The middle ages: Change in women’s personalities and social roles. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1, 75-84. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01543.x/abstract
Newton, N. & Stewart, A. J. (2013). The road not taken: Women’s life paths and gender-linked personality traits. Journal of Research in Personality, 47(4), 306-316. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661300024X