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Erikson's Stages of Development

A Closer Look at the Eight Psychosocial Stages

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Overview of Erikson's Stages of Development
• Support and Criticism
• Next in Psychosocial Development Guide Trust vs. Mistrust: Psychosocial Stage 1

Erik Erikson was an ego psychologist who developed one of the most popular and influential theories of development. While his theory was impacted by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's work , Erikson's theory centered on psychosocial development rather than psychosexual development .

The stages that make up his theory are as follows:

• Stage 1 : Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy from birth to 18 months)
• Stage 2 : Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Toddler years from 18 months to three years)
• Stage 3 : Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool years from three to five)
• Stage 4 : Industry vs. Inferiority (Middle school years from six to 11)
• Stage 5 : Identity vs. Confusion (Teen years from 12 to 18)
• Stage 6 : Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adult years from 18 to 40)
• Stage 7 : Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle age from 40 to 65)
• Stage 8 : Integrity vs. Despair (Older adulthood from 65 to death)

Let's take a closer look at the background and different stages that make up Erikson's psychosocial theory.

Overview of Erikson's Stages of Development

So what exactly did Erikson's theory of psychosocial development entail? Much like Sigmund Freud , Erikson believed that personality developed in a series of stages.

Unlike Freud's theory of psychosexual stages, however, Erikson's theory described the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan. Erikson was interested in how social interaction and relationships played a role in the development and growth of human beings.

Erikson's theory was based on what is known as the epigenetic principle . This principle suggests that people grow in a sequence that occurs over time and in the context of a larger community.

Click Play to Learn More About Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

This video has been medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD .

Conflict During Each Stage

Each stage in Erikson's theory builds on the preceding stages and paves the way for following periods of development. In each stage, Erikson believed people experience a conflict that serves as a turning point in development.  

In Erikson's view, these conflicts are centered on either developing a psychological quality or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for personal growth is high but so is the potential for failure.

If people successfully deal with the conflict, they emerge from the stage with psychological strengths that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. If they fail to deal effectively with these conflicts, they may not develop the essential skills needed for a strong sense of self.

Mastery Leads to Ego Strength

Erikson also believed that a sense of competence motivates behaviors and actions. Each stage in Erikson's theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life.

If the stage is handled well, the person will feel a sense of mastery, which is sometimes referred to as ego strength or ego quality. If the stage is managed poorly, the person will emerge with a sense of inadequacy in that aspect of development.

Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust

The first stage of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development occurs between birth and 1 year of age and is the most fundamental stage in life. Because an infant is utterly dependent, developing trust is based on the dependability and quality of the child's caregivers.

At this point in development, the child is utterly dependent upon adult caregivers for everything they need to survive including food, love, warmth, safety, and nurturing. If a caregiver fails to provide adequate care and love, the child will come to feel that they cannot trust or depend upon the adults in their life.

If a child successfully develops trust, the child will feel safe and secure in the world.   Caregivers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or rejecting contribute to feelings of mistrust in the children under their care. Failure to develop trust will result in fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.

During the first stage of psychosocial development, children develop a sense of trust when caregivers provide reliability, care, and affection. A lack of this will lead to mistrust.

No child is going to develop a sense of 100% trust or 100% doubt. Erikson believed that successful development was all about striking a balance between the two opposing sides. When this happens, children acquire hope, which Erikson described as an openness to experience tempered by some wariness that danger may be present.

Subsequent work by researchers including John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth demonstrated the importance of trust in forming healthy attachments during childhood and adulthood.

Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

The second stage of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development takes place during early childhood and is focused on children developing a greater sense of personal control.

The Role of Independence

At this point in development, children are just starting to gain a little independence. They are starting to perform basic actions on their own and making simple decisions about what they prefer. By allowing kids to make choices and gain control, parents and caregivers can help children develop a sense of autonomy.  

Potty Training

The essential theme of this stage is that children need to develop a sense of personal control over physical skills and a sense of independence. Potty training plays an important role in helping children develop this sense of autonomy.

Like Freud, Erikson believed that toilet training was a vital part of this process. However, Erikson's reasoning was quite different than that of Freud's. Erikson believed that learning to control one's bodily functions leads to a feeling of control and a sense of independence. Other important events include gaining more control over food choices, toy preferences, and clothing selection.

Children who struggle and who are shamed for their accidents may be left without a sense of personal control. Success during this stage of psychosocial development leads to feelings of autonomy; failure results in feelings of shame and doubt.

Finding Balance

Children who successfully complete this stage feel secure and confident, while those who do not are left with a sense of inadequacy and self-doubt. Erikson believed that achieving a balance between autonomy and shame and doubt would lead to will, which is the belief that children can act with intention, within reason and limits.

Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

The third stage of psychosocial development takes place during the preschool years. At this point in psychosocial development, children begin to assert their power and control over the world through directing play and other social interactions.

Children who are successful at this stage feel capable and able to lead others. Those who fail to acquire these skills are left with a sense of guilt, self-doubt, and lack of initiative.

The major theme of the third stage of psychosocial development is that children need to begin asserting control and power over the environment. Success in this stage leads to a sense of purpose. Children who try to exert too much power experience disapproval, resulting in a sense of guilt.

When an ideal balance of individual initiative and a willingness to work with others is achieved, the ego quality known as   purpose emerges.

Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority

The fourth psychosocial stage takes place during the early school years from approximately ages 5 to 11. Through social interactions, children begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities.

Children need to cope with new social and academic demands. Success leads to a sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority.

Children who are encouraged and commended by parents and teachers develop a feeling of competence and belief in their skills. Those who receive little or no encouragement from parents, teachers, or peers will doubt their abilities to be successful.

Successfully finding a balance at this stage of psychosocial development leads to the strength known as competence, in which children develop a belief in their abilities to handle the tasks set before them.

Stage 5: Identity vs. Confusion

The fifth psychosocial stage takes place during the often turbulent teenage years. This stage plays an essential role in developing a sense of personal identity which will continue to influence behavior and development for the rest of a person's life. Teens need to develop a sense of self and personal identity. Success leads to an ability to stay true to yourself, while failure leads to role confusion and a weak sense of self.

During adolescence, children explore their independence and develop a sense of self.   Those who receive proper encouragement and reinforcement through personal exploration will emerge from this stage with a strong sense of self and feelings of independence and control. Those who remain unsure of their beliefs and desires will feel insecure and confused about themselves and the future.

What Is Identity?

When psychologists talk about identity, they are referring to all of the beliefs, ideals, and values that help shape and guide a person's behavior. Completing this stage successfully leads to fidelity, which Erikson described as an ability to live by society's standards and expectations.

While Erikson believed that each stage of psychosocial development was important, he placed a particular emphasis on the development of ego identity. Ego identity is the  conscious  sense of self that we develop through social interaction and becomes a central focus during the identity versus confusion stage of psychosocial development.

According to Erikson, our ego identity constantly changes due to new experiences and information we acquire in our daily interactions with others. As we have new experiences, we also take on challenges that can help or hinder the development of identity.

Why Identity Is Important

Our personal identity gives each of us an integrated and cohesive sense of self that endures through our lives. Our sense of personal identity is shaped by our experiences and interactions with others, and it is this identity that helps guide our actions, beliefs, and behaviors as we age.

Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

Young adults need to form intimate, loving relationships with other people. Success leads to strong relationships, while failure results in loneliness and isolation. This stage covers the period of early adulthood when people are exploring personal relationships.  

Erikson believed it was vital that people develop close, committed relationships with other people. Those who are successful at this step will form relationships that are enduring and secure.

Building On Earlier Stages

Remember that each step builds on skills learned in previous steps. Erikson believed that a strong  sense of personal identity  was important for developing intimate relationships. Studies have demonstrated that those with a poor sense of self tend to have less committed relationships and are more likely to struggler with emotional isolation,  loneliness , and depression.

Successful resolution of this stage results in the virtue known as love. It is marked by the ability to form lasting, meaningful relationships with other people.

Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation

Adults need to create or nurture things that will outlast them, often by having children or creating a positive change that benefits other people. Success leads to feelings of usefulness and accomplishment, while failure results in shallow involvement in the world.

During adulthood, we continue to build our lives, focusing on our career and family. Those who are successful during this phase will feel that they are contributing to the world by being active in their home and community.   Those who fail to attain this skill will feel unproductive and uninvolved in the world.

Care is the virtue achieved when this stage is handled successfully. Being proud of your accomplishments, watching your children grow into adults, and developing a sense of unity with your life partner are important accomplishments of this stage.

Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair

The final psychosocial stage occurs during old age and is focused on reflecting back on life.   At this point in development, people look back on the events of their lives and determine if they are happy with the life that they lived or if they regret the things they did or didn't do.

Erikson's theory differed from many others because it addressed development throughout the entire lifespan, including old age. Older adults need to look back on life and feel a sense of fulfillment. Success at this stage leads to feelings of wisdom, while failure results in regret, bitterness, and despair.

At this stage, people reflect back on the events of their lives and take stock. Those who look back on a life they feel was well-lived will feel satisfied and ready to face the end of their lives with a sense of peace. Those who look back and only feel regret will instead feel fearful that their lives will end without accomplishing the things they feel they should have.​

Those who are unsuccessful during this stage will feel that their life has been wasted and may experience many regrets. The person will be left with feelings of bitterness and despair.

Those who feel proud of their accomplishments will feel a sense of integrity. Successfully completing this phase means looking back with few regrets and a general feeling of satisfaction. These individuals will attain   wisdom, even when confronting death.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Erikson's Theory

Erikson's theory also has its limitations and attracts valid criticisms. What kinds of experiences are necessary to successfully complete each stage? How does a person move from one stage to the next?

One major weakness of psychosocial theory is that the exact mechanisms for resolving conflicts and moving from one stage to the next are not well described or developed. The theory fails to detail exactly what type of experiences are necessary at each stage in order to successfully resolve the conflicts and move to the next stage.

One of the strengths of psychosocial theory is that it provides a broad framework from which to view development throughout the entire lifespan. It also allows us to emphasize the social nature of human beings and the important influence that social relationships have on development.

Researchers have found evidence supporting Erikson's ideas about identity and have further identified different sub-stages of identity formation.   Some research also suggests that people who form strong personal identities during adolescence are better capable of forming intimate relationships during early adulthood. Other research suggests, however, that identity formation and development continues well into adulthood.  

Why Was Erikson's Theory Important?

The theory was significant because it addressed development throughout a person's life, not just during childhood. It also stressed the importance of social relationships in shaping personality and growth at each point in development.

A Word From Verywell

It is important to remember that the psychosocial stages are just one theory of personality development . Some research may support certain aspects of this theoretical framework, but that does not mean that every aspect of the theory is supported by evidence. The theory can, however, be a helpful way to think about some of the different conflicts and challenges that people may face as they go through life.

It is also easy to look at each stage of Erikson's theory and consider how it can apply to your life. Learning about each stage can provide insight into what you might face as you age. It can also help you reflect on things that may have happened in the past and help you see ways you might be able to improve your coping skills to better deal with today's challenges.

Vogel-Scibilia SE, McNulty KC, Baxter B, Miller S, Dine M, Frese FJ. The recovery process utilizing Erikson's stages of human development . Community Ment Health J . 2009;45(6):405-14. doi:10.1007/s10597-009-9189-4

Malone JC, Liu SR, Vaillant GE, Rentz DM, Waldinger RJ. Midlife Eriksonian psychosocial development: Setting the stage for late-life cognitive and emotional health . Dev Psychol . 2016;52(3):496-508. doi:10.1037/a0039875

Orenstein GA, Lewis L. Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing.

Meeus W, van de Schoot R, Keijsers L, Branje S. Identity statuses as developmental trajectories: A five-wave longitudinal study in early-to-middle and middle-to-late adolescents .  J Youth Adolesc . 2012;41(8):1008-1021. doi:10.1007/s10964-011-9730-y

Fadjukoff P, Pulkkinen L, Kokko K. Identity formation in adulthood: A longitudinal study from age 27 to 50 .  Identity (Mahwah, N J) . 2016;16(1):8-23. doi:10.1080/15283488.2015.1121820

Carver, CS & Scheir, MF.  Perspectives on Personality . Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon; 2011.

• Erikson, E.H. Childhood and Society . (2nd ed.). New York: Norton; 1993.
• Erikson, EH & Erikson, JM. The Life Cycle Completed. New York: Norton; 1998.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Statuses of Ego Identity Analytical Essay

Introduction, identity statuses.

Ego identity may be regarded as the sense of one understanding him or herself as a distinct individual. It is basically an outcome of the identity crisis that is most evident as a person progresses through the adolescent years. A number of psychologists have attempted to explain the process of identity development. James Marcia elaborated on Erikson’s work in order to elucidate identity formation, particularly in adolescents. In his work, he described four statuses that characterize identity development.

According to Marcia (1996), the two criteria used to determine the identity state of an individual are crisis and commitment. Crisis in this context refers to the adolescent’s period of choosing among meaningful alternatives while commitment refers to the degree of personal investment the individual exhibits (Marcia, 1996). The four identity statuses as defined by Marcia are; identity foreclosure, identity diffusion, identity moratorium and identity achievement.

Identity Foreclosure

Identity foreclosure occurs when an adolescent has decided on a commitment but has not undergone an identity crisis. Such an adolescent has not had the opportunity to develop his own ideals and has come up with their identity as a result of what he has learnt from his parents and society, his personality is characterized by a certain rigidity of mind (Marcia, 1996).

Identity Diffusion

According to Marcia (1996), regardless of whether this type of an adolescent has or has not experienced a crisis he or she lacks commitment. In addition to this, the adolescent shows no interest in occupational or ideological choices (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999).

Identity Moratorium

Identity moratorium is the status where the individual is on the verge of experiencing an identity crisis but has not yet made a commitment (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999). Moreover, it is at this point that a majority of adolescents will explore the various aspects of their personalities; they will look at different career opportunities and different philosophies.

Identity Achievement

According to Marcia (1996), identity achievement is similar to identity diffusion as at this point the individual has undergone a crisis and is now committed to an occupation and an ideology. He has evaluated different career choices or ideologies and has made a decision on his own terms regardless of whether it is contrary to his or her parents’ wishes (Marcia, 1996).

Ego Identity and High School

During high school, most adolescents are adjusting to a greater degree of independence than they have had before, particularly if they are away in boarding schools.

They are expected to make up their own minds with regard to friends, social activities as well as their studies (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999). In addition, they are most vulnerable to pressure from peers at this stage of life as they have not fully developed their own identities and will be trying to figure out where they fit in.

For this reasons, most of them are at the identity moratorium status where they are probably experiencing an identity crisis or are about to experience one. Towards the end of high school, however, they will be on the road to developing their own identities and hence have achieved their identity as a result of their varied experiences (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999).

On a personal level, the loss of a loved one led me towards identity achievement. To lose someone you were dependent on means that you have to develop coping mechanisms to make life bearable. Being considerably young, I had to learn how to make independent choices and deal with their consequences, good or bad on my own. This enabled me to develop principles and personal ethics that moved me to identity achievement.

In conclusion, Marcia was right in describing these four statuses of ego identity as it is clear that one does not develop an identity overnight but develops it over a period that is characterized by a variety of crises and experiences. The experiences mould the identity of an individual and enable him or her to find a path in life that is governed by personal choices.

Marcia, J. E. (1996). Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551-558. Retrieved from: < http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1984/A1984TR91100001.pdf >.

Wentzel, K. R. & McNamara, C. C. (1999). Interpersonal Relationships, Emotional Distress, and Prosocial Behavior in Middle School. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 19: 114 – 125.

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Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id

Freud died 80 years ago this week. In this “Virtual Roundtable,” three scholars debate the legacy of his 1923 text.

Sigmund Freud died 80 years ago this week, and his 1923 study, The Ego and the Id , which introduced many of the foundational concepts of psychoanalysis, entered the public domain earlier this year. Freud’s ideas have long been absorbed by popular culture, but what role do they continue to play in the academy, in the clinical profession, and in everyday life? To answer those questions, this roundtable discussion—curated by Public Books and JSTOR Daily —asks scholars about the legacy of The Ego and the Id in the 21st century.

• Elizabeth Lunbeck: Pity the Poor Ego! • Amber Jamilla Musser: The Sunken Place: Race, Racism, and Freud • Todd McGowan: The Superego or the Id

Pity the Poor Ego!

Elizabeth Lunbeck

It would be hard to overestimate the significance of Freud’s The Ego and the Id for psychoanalytic theory and practice. This landmark essay has also enjoyed a robust extra-analytic life, giving the rest of us both a useful terminology and a readily apprehended model of the mind’s workings. The ego, id, and superego (the last two terms made their debut in The Ego and the Id ) are now inescapably part of popular culture and learned discourse, political commentary and everyday talk.

Type “id ego superego” into a Google search box and you’re likely to be directed to sites offering to explain the terms “for dummies”—a measure of the terms’ ubiquity if not intelligibility. You might also come upon images of The Simpsons: Homer representing the id (motivated by pleasure, characterized by unbridled desire), Marge the ego (controlled, beholden to reality), and Lisa the superego (the family’s dour conscience), all of which need little explanation, so intuitively on target do they seem.

If you add “politics” to the search string, you’ll find sites advancing the argument that Donald Trump’s success is premised on his speaking to our collective id, our desires to be free of the punishing strictures of law and morality and to grab whatever we please—“a flailing tantrum of fleshly energy.” Barack Obama in this scheme occupies the position of benign superego: incorruptible, cautious, and given to moralizing, the embodiment of our highest ideas and values but, in the end, not much fun. You’ll also glean from Google that Trump’s ego is fragile and needy but also immense and raging, its state—small or large?—a dire threat to the nation’s stability and security.

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In these examples, the ego is used in two distinct, though not wholly contradictory, ways. With The Simpsons , the ego appears as an agency that strives to mediate between the id and superego. When we speak of Trump’s fragile ego, the term is being used somewhat differently, to refer to the entirety of the self, or the whole person. When we say of someone that their ego is too big, we are criticizing their being and self-presentation, not their (presumably) weak superego.

The idea of the ego as agency is routinely considered more analytically rigorous and thus more “Freudian” than the ego-as-self, yet both interpretations of the ego are found not only in popular culture, but also—perhaps surprisingly—in Freud. Further, I would argue that the second of these Freudian conceptualizations, premised on feelings, is more consonant with a distinctively American construal of the self than are the abstractions of ego psychology. Understanding why this is so necessitates a look at the post-Freud history of the ego in America—in particular at the attempts of some psychoanalysts to clear up ambiguities in Freud’s texts, attempts that luckily for us met with only mixed success.

As Freud proposed in The Ego and the Id , three agencies of the mind jostle for supremacy: the ego strives for mastery over both id and superego, an ongoing and often fruitless task in the face of the id’s wild passions and demands for satisfaction, on the one hand, and the superego’s crushing, even authoritarian, demands for submission to its dictates, on the other. The work of psychoanalysis was “to strengthen the ego”; as Freud famously put it 10 years later, “where id was, there ego shall be.”

The Freudian ego sought to harmonize relations among the mind’s agencies. It had “important functions,” but when it came to their exercise it was weak, its position, in Freud’s words, “like that of a constitutional monarch, without whose sanction no law can be passed but who hesitates long before imposing his veto on any measure put forward by Parliament.” Elsewhere in the essay, the ego vis-à-vis the id was no monarch but a commoner, “a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse … obliged to guide it where it wants to go.” Submitting to the id, the ego-as-rider could at least retain the illusion of sovereignty. The superego would brook no similar fantasy in the erstwhile royal, instead establishing “an agency within him” to monitor his desires for aggression, “like a garrison in a conquered city.” Pity the poor ego!

It could be argued that the Viennese émigré psychoanalysts who took over the American analytic establishment in the postwar years did precisely that. They amplified this Freudian ego’s powers of mastery while downplaying its conflicts with the id and superego. They formulated a distinctively optimistic and melioristic school of analytic thought, “ego psychology,” in which the ego was ideally mature and autonomous, a smoothly operating agency of mind oriented toward adaptation with the external environment. More than a few commentators have argued that ego psychology’s celebration of compliance and de-emphasis of conflict fit perfectly with the demands of the postwar corporate state as well as with the prevailing stress on conformity and fitting in. Think here of William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man , published in 1956, or of David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd , from 1950, best sellers that were read as laments for a lost golden age of individualism and autonomy.

Among the professed achievements of the mid-century ego psychologists was clearing up Freud’s productive ambiguity around the term’s meanings; ego would henceforth refer to the agency’s regulatory and adaptive functions, not to the person or the self. Consider that the doyen of ego psychology, Heinz Hartmann, gently chided Freud for sometimes using “the term ego in more than one sense, and not always in the sense in which it was best defined.”

Ego psychologists’ American hegemony was premised on their claim to being Freud’s most loyal heirs; The Ego and the Id ranked high among their school’s foundational texts. Freud’s text, however, supports a conceptualization of the ego not only as an agency of mind (their reading) but also as an experienced sense of self. In it, Freud had intriguingly referred to the ego as “first and foremost a body-ego,” explaining that it “is ultimately derived from bodily sensations.”

Ignored by the ego psychologists, Freud’s statement was taken up in the 1920s and 1930s by, among others, the Viennese analyst Paul Federn, who coined the term “ego feeling” to capture his contention that the ego was best construed as referring to our subjective experience of ourselves, our sense of existing as a person or self. He argued that the ego should be conceived of in terms of experience, not conceptualized as a mental abstraction. Ego feeling, he explained in 1928, was “the sensation, constantly present, of one’s own person—the ego’s perception of itself.” Federn was a phenomenologist, implicitly critiquing Freud and his heirs for favoring systematizing over felt experience while at the same time fashioning himself a follower, not an independent thinker. Marginalization has been the price of his fealty, as he and his insights have been largely overlooked in the analytic canon.

When we talk of the American ego, we are more likely than not speaking Federn-ese. Federn appreciated the evanescence of moods and the complexity of our self-experiences. Talk of our “inner resources” and equanimity, of the necessity of egoism and its compatibility with altruism, of commonplace fantasies of “love, greatness, and ambition” runs through his writings. Even the analytic session is likely focused more manifestly on the “goals of self-preservation, of enrichment, of self-assertion, of social achievements for others, of gaining friends and adherents, up to the phantasy of leadership and discipleship” than on ensuring the ego’s supremacy over the id and superego.

The Ego and the Id supports such a reading of the ego as experiencing self, the individual possessed of knowledge of her bodily and mental “selfsameness and continuity in time.” Federn’s “ego feeling” is also compatible with 1950s vernacular invocations of the “real self” as well as with the sense of identity that Erik Erikson defined in terms of the feelings individuals have of themselves as living, experiencing persons, the authentic self that would become the holy grail for so many Americans in the 1960s and beyond. Erikson, also an ego psychologist but banished from the mainstream of analysis for his focus on the experiential dimension of the self, would capture this same sensibility under the rubric of identity. His delineation of the term identity to refer to a subjective sense of self, taken up overnight within and beyond psychoanalysis, arguably did more to ensure the survival of the discipline in the United States than did the all the labors of Freud’s most dutiful followers.

Thus, while Google may give us images (including cartoons) of a precisely divvied-up Freudian mind, it is the holistic ego-as-self that is as much the subject of most of our everyday therapeutic, analytically inflected talk. This ego-as-self is less readily represented pictorially than its integrated counterpart but nonetheless central to our ways of conveying our experience of ourselves and of others. It is as authentically psychoanalytic as its linguistic double, neither a corruption of Freud’s intentions nor an import from the gauzy reaches of humanistic psychology. When we invoke Trump’s outsized and easily bruised ego, for example, we are calling on this dimension of the term, referring to his sense of self—at once inflated and fragile. Federn has been forgotten, but his feelings-centered analytic sensibility lives on. It may be all the more relevant today, when, as many have observed, our feelings are no longer sequestered from reason and objectivity but, instead, instrumentally mobilized as the coin of the populist realm.

Jump to: Elizabeth Lunbeck , Amber Jamilla Musser , Todd McGowan

The Sunken Place: Race, Racism, and Freud

Amber Jamilla Musser

In a tense scene from the 2017 film Get Out , Missy (Catherine Keener) finds her daughter’s boyfriend, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), sneaking a cigarette outside and invites him into the sitting room, which also functions as a home office for her therapy clients. Chris, a black photographer, has just met his white girlfriend, Rose’s, liberal family, including her mother, Missy, for the first time. As the two sit across from one another, Missy asks Chris about his childhood, her spoon repeatedly striking the inside of a teacup, and Chris, eyes watering uncontrollably, begins to sink deep into the “sunken place.” As his present surroundings shift out of view, he flails and falls through a large black void, before eventually waking in his own bed, uncertain as to what’s taken place. The therapy office setting is worth noting, for while what follows this early hypnosis scene is a horror-comedy about racism, psychoanalytic ideas of the unconscious help illuminate race relations in the film and beyond.

In the film, the “sunken place” refers to a fugue state that subdues the black characters so that (spoiler alert) the brains of the highest white bidder can be transplanted into their bodies. While this large black void is the product of director Jordan Peele’s imagination, the “sunken place” has culturally come to signify a pernicious aspect of racialization; namely, the nonwhite overidentification with whiteness. Recent memes make this connection clear. In one, Kanye West, who not too long ago argued that President Trump was on “a hero’s journey,” appears in the armchair from Get Outwearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, tears streaming down his face. In another, the actress Stacey Dash, who ran for Congress as a Republican from California, stares blankly out of a window.

Freud’s The Ego and the Id , however, gives us another way to understand the “sunken place.” Writing in 1923,Freud presents a comprehensive map of the psyche as a space where the ego, superego, and id form a dynamic structure that reacts to and is formed by multiple varieties of the unconscious. The superego, Freud argues, acts as a sort of “normative” check on behavior, while the id is libidinal energy and purely hedonistic. The ego, what is consciously enacted, balances these two different modes of the unconscious in order to function.

The Freudian model helps us to understand how racialization, the process of understanding oneself through the prism of racial categories, occurs at the level of the unconscious. When viewed in the context of psychoanalysis, the “sunken place” is what happens when the superego’s attachment to whiteness runs amok; when Chris’s eyes tear up and he involuntarily scratches the armchair, he is enacting bodily resistance that is connected to the id. What’s more, Freud’s structure also allows us to extend this understanding of race beyond the individual, toward thinking about why the “sunken place” can be seen as a metonym for race relations in the United States writ large.

Race itself was largely underdiscussed in Freud’s works. In one of his most explicit engagements with racial difference, 1930’s Civilization and its Discontents , he mostlyconfined his theorizations of racial difference to thinking about the atavistic and primitive. Following Freud, other analysts in the early 20th century tended to ignore underlying racial dynamics at work in their theories. For example, if patients discussed the ethnicity or race of a caretaker or other recurring figure in their lives, analysts tended not to explore these topics further. As a rich body of contemporary critical work on psychoanalysis has explored, this inattention to race created an assumption of universal normativity that was, in fact, attached to whiteness.

While psychoanalysis has historically ignored or mishandled discussions of race, Freud’s The Ego and the Id introduces concepts that are useful in thinking through race relations on both an individual and a national level. His tripartite division of the psyche can help show us how race itself functions as a “metalanguage,” to use Evelyn Higginbotham’s phrase , one that structures the unconscious and the possibilities for the emergence of the ego. In Get Out , “the sunken place” is the stage for a battle between a white-identified superego, which is induced through brain transplantation or hypnosis, and a black-identified id. Outside of the parameters of science fiction, however, this racialized inner struggle offers insight into theorizations of assimilation and racialization more broadly.

Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander describes assimilation, a process of adapting to a form of (implicitly white) normativity, as an attempt to incorporate difference through erasure even while insisting on some inassimilable (racialized) residue. Alexander writes , “Assimilation is possible to the degree that socialization channels exist that can provide ‘civilizing’ or ‘purifying’ processes—through interaction, education, or mass mediated representation—that allow persons to be separated from their primordial qualities. It is not the qualities themselves that are purified or accepted but the persons who formerly, and often still privately, bear them. ” The tensions between these performances of white normativity—“civilization”—and the particular “qualities” that comprise the minority subject that Alexander names are akin to the perpetual struggle Freud describes between the superego, id, and ego.

Drawing on psychoanalysis, recent theorists such as David Eng and Anne Anlin Cheng have emphasized the melancholia that accompanies assimilation—Chris’s involuntary tears in the “sunken place” and the instances of staring out the window, going on evening runs, and the flash-induced screams of the other black characters who have received white-brain implants perhaps being among the most extreme forms. Cheng argues that having to assimilate to a white culture produces melancholy at both the unattainability of whiteness for black and brown subjects and at the repression of racial otherness necessary to sustain white dominance. Cheng’s description of the “inarticulable loss that comes to inform the individual’s sense of his or her own subjectivity” helps explain why the conditions of white normativity can be particularly psychologically harmful for nonwhite subjects.

While Freud’s concepts are useful for understanding the psychological burden of racialization for nonwhite subjects under conditions of white normativity, scholars have also explored how Freud’s concepts of the ego, id, and superego can be used to theorize what it means to frame whiteness as a form of national consciousness. Describing the sadistic impulses of Jim Crow, theorist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon argued that the ego of the United States is masochistic. In imagining the psychic structure of the country as a whole, he saw a clash between the nation’s aggressive id—which was attempting to dominate black people—and its superego—which felt guilt at the overt racism of a supposedly “democratic” country.

Fanon argued that the United States’ desires to punish black people (manifesting in virulent antiblack violence) were swiftly “followed by a guilt complex because of the sanction against such behavior by the democratic culture of the country in question.” Fanon exposed the hypocrisy inherent in holding anti-racist ideals while allowing racist violence to flourish. The country’s national masochism, he argued, meant that the United States could not recognize its own forms of white aggression; instead, the country embraced a stance of passivity and victimization in relation to nonwhites disavowing their own overt violence. Or, in Freud’s language, the country submerged the id in favor of an idealization of the superego.

We see this dynamic, too, in Get Out , where the white characters fetishize black physicality and talent as somehow inherent to their race, while strenuously denying any charges of racism. In the film, the white characters who wish to inhabit black bodies understand themselves primarily as victims of aging and other processes of debilitation, a logic that allows them to use their alleged affection for blackness to cloak their aggressive, dominative tendencies. Before Chris and Rose meet her parents, Rose tells him that they would have voted for Obama for a third term, a statement repeated in a later scene, by her father (Bradley Whitford), when he notices Chris watching the black domestic workers on the property: “By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could. Best president in my lifetime. Hands down.” In such a statement, we can see ways that the masochistic white ego Fanon spoke about remains an accurate reflection of national debates about political correctness, what counts as racism, and the question of reparations.

As Get Out helps dramatize, we can use the legacy of Freud’s parsing of the unconscious to identify the tensions at work within individuals struggling to assimilate to a perceived idea of white normativity. But we can also use psychoanalytic concepts to understand how certain ideas of race have created a white national consciousness, which, in the United States and elsewhere, is in crisis. At this broader scale, we can begin to see how the national superego has sutured normativity to a pernicious idea of whiteness, one that manifests psychological, but also physical, aggression against nonwhite subjects.

For, while the presumption that whiteness is the “normal” and dominant culture situates it in the position of the superego for individuals who are attempting to assimilate, this assumption of superiority is actually an anxious position, haunted by racial others and constantly threatened by the possibility of destabilization. For many, this has led to difficulty reckoning with white culture’s violent tendencies, and to an insistence on its innocence. Working more with these Freudian dynamics might help us think more carefully about both strategies of resistance and survival for nonwhite subjects and what fuller contours of white accountability could look like.

The Superego or the Id

Todd McGowan

To properly understand The Ego and the Id ,we should mentally retitle it The Superego . The two terms most frequently invoked from Freud’s 1923 text are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the ego and the id . We have easily integrated them into our thinking and use them freely in everyday speech. The third term of the structural model—the superego —receives far less attention. This is evident, for instance, in the pop psychoanalysis surrounding Donald Trump. Some diagnose him as a narcissist, someone in love with his own ego. Others say that he represents the American id, because he lacks the self-control that inhibits most people. According to these views, he has either too much ego or too much id. Never one to be self-critical, Trump’s problem doesn’t appear to be an excess of superego. If the superego comes into play at all in diagnosing him, one would say that the problem is his lack of a proper superego.

In the popular reception of Freud’s thought, the discovery of the id typically represents his most significant contribution to an understanding of how we act. The id marks the point at which individuals lack control over what they do. The impulses of the id drive us to act in ways that are unacceptable to the rest of society. And yet, the concept of the id nonetheless serves a comforting function, in that it enables us to associate our most disturbing actions with biological impulses for which we have no responsibility. For this reason, we have to look beyond the id if we want to see how Freud most unsettles our self-understanding.

Freud’s introduction of the superego, in contrast, represents the most radical moment of The Ego and the Id , because it challenges all traditional conceptions of morality. Typically, our sense of the collective good restrains the amorality of our individual desires: we might want to crash our car into the driver who has just cut us off, but our conscience prevents us from disrupting our collective ability to coexist as drivers on the road. Historically, the reception of Freud’s work has considered the superego as this voice of moral conscience, but Freud theorizes that there are amoral roots to this moral voice. According to Freud, the superego does not represent the collective good, but manifests the individual desires of the id, which run counter to the collective good.

With the discovery of the concept of the superego, Freud reshapes how we think of ourselves as moral actors. If Freud is right that the superego “reaches deep down into the id,” then all our purportedly moral impulses have their roots in libidinal enjoyment. When we upbraid ourselves for a wayward desire for a married coworker, this moral reproof doesn’t dissipate the enjoyment of this desire but multiplies it. The more that we experience a desire as transgressive, the more ardently we feel it. In this way, the superego enables us to enjoy our desire while consciously believing that we are restraining it.

The concept of the superego reveals that the traditional picture of morality hides a fundamental amorality, which is why the response to The Ego and the Id has scrupulously avoided it. When we translate radical ideas like the superego into our common understanding, we reveal our assumed beliefs and values. In such a translation, the more distortion a concept suffers, the more it must represent a challenge to our ordinary way of thinking. This is the case with the popular emphasis on the ego and the id relative to the superego. What has been lost is the most radical discovery within this text.

Our failure to recognize how Freud theorizes the superego leaves us unable to contend with the moral crises that confront us today. We can see the catastrophic consequences in our contemporary relationship to the environment, for example. As our guilt about plastic in the oceans, carbon emissions, and other horrors increases, it augments our enjoyment of plastic and carbon rather than detracting from it. Using plastic ceases to be just a convenience and becomes a transgression, which gives us something to enjoy where otherwise we would just have something to use.

Enjoyment always involves a relationship to a limit. But in these cases, enjoyment derives from transgression, the sense of going beyond a limit. Our conscious feeling of guilt about transgression corresponds to an unconscious enjoyment that the superego augments. The more that environmental warnings take the form of directions from the superego, the more they create guilt without changing the basic situation. Far from limiting the enjoyment of our destructive desires, morality becomes, in Freud’s way of thinking, a privileged ground for expressing it, albeit in a disguised form. It turns out that what we think of as morality has nothing at all to do with morality.

The superego produces a sense of transgression and thereby supercharges our desire, turning morality into a way of enjoying ourselves. Picking up Freud’s discovery 50 years later, Jacques Lacan announces, “Nothing forces anyone to enjoy ( jouir ) except the superego. The superego is the imperative of jouissance—Enjoy!” All of our seemingly moral impulses and the pangs of conscience that follow are modes of obeying this imperative.

In this light, we might reevaluate the diagnosis of Donald Trump. If he seems unable to restrain himself and appears constantly preoccupied with finding enjoyment, this suggests that the problem is neither too much ego nor too much id. We should instead hazard the “wild psychoanalytic” interpretation that Trump suffers from too much superego. His preoccupation with enjoying himself—and never enjoying himself enough to find satisfaction—reflects the predominance of the superego in his psyche, making clear that the superego has nothing to do with actual morality, and everything with wanton immorality.

When we understand morality as a disguised form of enjoyment, this does not free us from morality. Instead, the discovery of the superego and its imperative to enjoy demands a new way of conceiving morality. Rather than being the vehicle of morality, the superego is a great threat to any moral action, because it allows us to believe that we are acting morally while we are actually finding a circuitous path to our own enjoyment. Contrary to the popular reading of the superego, authentic moral action requires a rejection of the superego’s imperatives, not obedience to them.

Morality freed from the superego would no longer involve guilt. It would focus on redefining our relationship to law. Rather than seeing law as an external constraint imposed on us by society, we would see it as the form that our own self-limitation takes. This would entail a change in how we relate to the law. If the law is our self-limitation rather than an external limit, we lose the possibility of enjoyment associated with transgression. One can transgress a law but not one’s own self-limitation.

In terms of the contemporary environmental crisis, we would conceive of a constraint on the use of plastic as the only way to enjoy using plastic, not as a restriction on this enjoyment. The limit on use would become our own form of enjoyment because the limit would be our own, not something imposed on us. The superego enjoins us to reject any limit by always pushing our enjoyment further. Identifying the law as our self-limitation provides a way of breaking with the logic of the superego and its fundamentally immoral form of morality.

Given what he chose as the title for the book— The Ego and the Id —it is clear that even Freud himself did not properly identify what was most radical in his discovery. He omitted the superego from the title at the expense of the ego and the id, even though his recognition of the superego and its role in the psyche represents the key insight from the book. In this sense, Freud paved the way for the popular misapprehension that followed.

What is missed or ignored by society often reveals what most unsettles it. Our commonly held beliefs and values might try to mute the disturbance caused by radical ideas like the superego, but they don’t eliminate their influence completely. By focusing on what Freud himself omits, we can uncover the insight in his work most able to help us think beyond the confines of traditional morality. The path of a genuine morality must travel beyond the superego.

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3 Self and Identity

For human beings, the self is what happens when “I” encounters “Me.” The central psychological question of selfhood, then, is this: How does a person apprehend and understand who he or she is? Over the past 100 years, psychologists have approached the study of self (and the related concept of identity) in many different ways, but three central metaphors for the self repeatedly emerge. First, the self may be seen as a social actor, who enacts roles and displays traits by performing behaviors in the presence of others. Second, the self is a motivated agent, who acts upon inner desires and formulates goals, values, and plans to guide behavior in the future. Third, the self eventually becomes an autobiographical author, too, who takes stock of life — past, present, and future — to create a story about who I am, how I came to be, and where my life may be going. This module briefly reviews central ideas and research findings on the self as an actor, an agent, and an author, with an emphasis on how these features of selfhood develop over the human life course.

Learning Objectives

• Explain the basic idea of reflexivity in human selfhood—how the “I” encounters and makes sense of itself (the “Me”).
• Describe fundamental distinctions between three different perspectives on the self: the self as actor, agent, and author.
• Describe how a sense of self as a social actor emerges around the age of 2 years and how it develops going forward.
• Describe the development of the self’s sense of motivated agency from the emergence of the child’s theory of mind to the articulation of life goals and values in adolescence and beyond.
• Define the term narrative identity, and explain what psychological and cultural functions narrative identity serves.

Introduction

In the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the ancient Greeks inscribed the words: “Know thy self .” For at least 2,500 years, and probably longer, human beings have pondered the meaning of the ancient aphorism. Over the past century, psychological scientists have joined the effort. They have formulated many theories and tested countless hypotheses that speak to the central question of human selfhood: How does a person know who he or she is?

The ancient Greeks seemed to realize that the self is inherently reflexive —it reflects back on itself. In the disarmingly simple idea made famous by the great psychologist William James ( 1892/1963 ), the self is what happens when “I” reflects back upon “Me.” The self is both the I and the Me—it is the knower, and it is what the knower knows when the knower reflects upon itself. When you look back at yourself, what do you see? When you look inside, what do you find? Moreover, when you try to change your self in some way, what is it that you are trying to change? The philosopher Charles Taylor ( 1989 ) describes the self as a reflexive project . In modern life, Taylor agues, we often try to manage, discipline, refine, improve, or develop the self. We work on our selves, as we might work on any other interesting project. But what exactly is it that we work on?

Imagine for a moment that you have decided to improve your self . You might, say, go on a diet to improve your appearance. Or you might decide to be nicer to your mother, in order to improve that important social role. Or maybe the problem is at work—you need to find a better job or go back to school to prepare for a different career. Perhaps you just need to work harder. Or get organized. Or recommit yourself to religion. Or maybe the key is to begin thinking about your whole life story in a completely different way, in a way that you hope will bring you more happiness, fulfillment, peace, or excitement.

Although there are many different ways you might reflect upon and try to improve the self, it turns out that many, if not most, of them fall roughly into three broad psychological categories ( McAdams & Cox, 2010 ). The I may encounter the Me as (a) a social actor, (b) a motivated agent, or (c) an autobiographical author.

The Social Actor

Shakespeare tapped into a deep truth about human nature when he famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” He was wrong about the “merely,” however, for there is nothing more important for human adaptation than the manner in which we perform our roles as actors in the everyday theatre of social life. What Shakespeare may have sensed but could not have fully understood is that human beings evolved to live in social groups. Beginning with Darwin ( 1872/1965 ) and running through contemporary conceptions of human evolution, scientists have portrayed human nature as profoundly social ( Wilson, 2012 ). For a few million years, Homo sapiens and their evolutionary forerunners have survived and flourished by virtue of their ability to live and work together in complex social groups, cooperating with each other to solve problems and overcome threats and competing with each other in the face of limited resources. As social animals, human beings strive to get along and get ahead in the presence of each other ( Hogan, 1982 ). Evolution has prepared us to care deeply about social acceptance and social status, for those unfortunate individuals who do not get along well in social groups or who fail to attain a requisite status among their peers have typically been severely compromised when it comes to survival and reproduction. It makes consummate evolutionary sense, therefore, that the human “I” should apprehend the “Me” first and foremost as a social actor .

For human beings, the sense of the self as a social actor begins to emerge around the age of 18 months. Numerous studies have shown that by the time they reach their second birthday most toddlers recognize themselves in mirrors and other reflecting devices ( Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979 ; Rochat, 2003 ). What they see is an embodied actor who moves through space and time. Many children begin to use words such as “me” and “mine” in the second year of life, suggesting that the I now has linguistic labels that can be applied reflexively to itself: I call myself “me.” Around the same time, children also begin to express social emotions such as embarrassment, shame, guilt, and pride ( Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007 ). These emotions tell the social actor how well he or she is performing in the group. When I do things that win the approval of others, I feel proud of myself. When I fail in the presence of others, I may feel embarrassment or shame. When I violate a social rule, I may experience guilt, which may motivate me to make amends.

Many of the classic psychological theories of human selfhood point to the second year of life as a key developmental period. For example, Freud ( 1923/1961 ) and his followers in the psychoanalytic tradition traced the emergence of an autonomous ego back to the second year. Freud used the term “ego” (in German das Ich , which also translates into “the I”) to refer to an executive self in the personality. Erikson ( 1963 ) argued that experiences of trust and interpersonal attachment in the first year of life help to consolidate the autonomy of the ego in the second. Coming from a more sociological perspective, Mead ( 1934 ) suggested that the I comes to know the Me through reflection, which may begin quite literally with mirrors but later involves the reflected appraisals of others. I come to know who I am as a social actor, Mead argued, by noting how other people in my social world react to my performances. In the development of the self as a social actor, other people function like mirrors—they reflect who I am back to me.

Research has shown that when young children begin to make attributions about themselves, they start simple ( Harter, 2006 ). At age 4, Jessica knows that she has dark hair, knows that she lives in a white house, and describes herself to others in terms of simple behavioral traits . She may say that she is “nice,” or “helpful,” or that she is “a good girl most of the time.” By the time, she hits fifth grade (age 10), Jessica sees herself in more complex ways, attributing traits to the self such as “honest,” “moody,” “outgoing,” “shy,” “hard-working,” “smart,” “good at math but not gym class,” or “nice except when I am around my annoying brother.” By late childhood and early adolescence, the personality traits that people attribute to themselves, as well as those attributed to them by others, tend to correlate with each other in ways that conform to a well-established taxonomy of five broad trait domains, repeatedly derived in studies of adult personality and often called the Big Five : (1) extraversion, (2) neuroticism, (3) agreeableness, (4) conscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience ( Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008 ). By late childhood, moreover, self-conceptions will likely also include important social roles : “I am a good student,” “I am the oldest daughter,” or “I am a good friend to Sarah.”

Traits and roles, and variations on these notions, are the main currency of the self as social actor ( McAdams & Cox, 2010 ). Trait terms capture perceived consistencies in social performance. They convey what I reflexively perceive to be my overall acting style, based in part on how I think others see me as an actor in many different social situations. Roles capture the quality, as I perceive it, of important structured relationships in my life. Taken together, traits and roles make up the main features of my social reputation , as I apprehend it in my own mind ( Hogan, 1982 ).

If you have ever tried hard to change yourself, you may have taken aim at your social reputation, targeting your central traits or your social roles. Maybe you woke up one day and decided that you must become a more optimistic and emotionally upbeat person. Taking into consideration the reflected appraisals of others, you realized that even your friends seem to avoid you because you bring them down. In addition, it feels bad to feel so bad all the time: Wouldn’t it be better to feel good, to have more energy and hope? In the language of traits, you have decided to “work on” your “neuroticism.” Or maybe instead, your problem is the trait of “conscientiousness”: You are undisciplined and don’t work hard enough, so you resolve to make changes in that area. Self-improvement efforts such as these—aimed at changing one’s traits to become a more effective social actor—are sometimes successful, but they are very hard—kind of like dieting. Research suggests that broad traits tend to be stubborn, resistant to change, even with the aid of psychotherapy. However, people often have more success working directly on their social roles. To become a more effective social actor, you may want to take aim at the important roles you play in life. What can I do to become a better son or daughter? How can I find new and meaningful roles to perform at work, or in my family, or among my friends, or in my church and community? By doing concrete things that enrich your performances in important social roles, you may begin to see yourself in a new light, and others will notice the change, too. Social actors hold the potential to transform their performances across the human life course. Each time you walk out on stage, you have a chance to start anew.

The Motivated Agent

Whether we are talking literally about the theatrical stage or more figuratively, as I do in this module, about the everyday social environment for human behavior, observers can never fully know what is in the actor’s head, no matter how closely they watch. We can see actors act, but we cannot know for sure what they want or what they value , unless they tell us straightaway. As a social actor, a person may come across as friendly and compassionate, or cynical and mean-spirited, but in neither case can we infer their motivations from their traits or their roles. What does the friendly person want? What is the cynical father trying to achieve? Many broad psychological theories of the self prioritize the motivational qualities of human behavior—the inner needs, wants, desires, goals, values, plans, programs, fears, and aversions that seem to give behavior its direction and purpose ( Bandura, 1989 ; Deci & Ryan, 1991 ; Markus & Nurius, 1986 ). These kinds of theories explicitly conceive of the self as a motivated agent.

To be an agent is to act with direction and purpose, to move forward into the future in pursuit of self-chosen and valued goals. In a sense, human beings are agents even as infants, for babies can surely act in goal-directed ways. By age 1 year, moreover, infants show a strong preference for observing and imitating the goal-directed, intentional behavior of others, rather than random behaviors ( Woodward, 2009 ). Still, it is one thing to act in goal-directed ways; it is quite another for the I to know itself (the Me) as an intentional and purposeful force who moves forward in life in pursuit of self-chosen goals, values, and other desired end states. In order to do so, the person must first realize that people indeed have desires and goals in their minds and that these inner desires and goals motivate (initiate, energize, put into motion) their behavior. According to a strong line of research in developmental psychology, attaining this kind of understanding means acquiring a theory of mind ( Wellman, 1993 ), which occurs for most children by the age of 4. Once a child understands that other people’s behavior is often motivated by inner desires and goals, it is a small step to apprehend the self in similar terms.

Building on theory of mind and other cognitive and social developments, children begin to construct the self as a motivated agent in the elementary school years, layered over their still-developing sense of themselves as social actors. Theory and research on what developmental psychologists call the age 5-to-7 shift converge to suggest that children become more planful, intentional, and systematic in their pursuit of valued goals during this time ( Sameroff & Haith, 1996 ). Schooling reinforces the shift in that teachers and curricula place increasing demands on students to work hard, adhere to schedules, focus on goals, and achieve success in particular, well-defined task domains. Their relative success in achieving their most cherished goals, furthermore, goes a long way in determining children’s self-esteem ( Robins, Tracy, & Trzesniewski, 2008 ). Motivated agents feel good about themselves to the extent they believe that they are making good progress in achieving their goals and advancing their most important values.

Goals and values become even more important for the self in adolescence, as teenagers begin to confront what Erikson ( 1963 ) famously termed the developmental challenge of identity . For adolescents and young adults, establishing a psychologically efficacious identity involves exploring different options with respect to life goals, values, vocations, and intimate relationships and eventually committing to a motivational and ideological agenda for adult life—an integrated and realistic sense of what I want and value in life and how I plan to achieve it ( Kroger & Marcia, 2011 ). Committing oneself to an integrated suite of life goals and values is perhaps the greatest achievement for the self as motivated agent . Establishing an adult identity has implications, as well, for how a person moves through life as a social actor, entailing new role commitments and, perhaps, a changing understanding of one’s basic dispositional traits. According to Erikson, however, identity achievement is always provisional, for adults continue to work on their identities as they move into midlife and beyond, often relinquishing old goals in favor of new ones, investing themselves in new projects and making new plans, exploring new relationships, and shifting their priorities in response to changing life circumstances ( Freund & Riediger, 2006 ; Josselson, 1996 ).

There is a sense whereby any time you try to change yourself, you are assuming the role of a motivated agent. After all, to strive to change something is inherently what an agent does. However, what particular feature of selfhood you try to change may correspond to your self as actor, agent, or author, or some combination. When you try to change your traits or roles, you take aim at the social actor. By contrast, when you try to change your values or life goals, you are focusing on yourself as a motivated agent. Adolescence and young adulthood are periods in the human life course when many of us focus attention on our values and life goals. Perhaps you grew up as a traditional Catholic, but now in college you believe that the values inculcated in your childhood no longer function so well for you. You no longer believe in the central tenets of the Catholic Church, say, and are now working to replace your old values with new ones. Or maybe you still want to be Catholic, but you feel that your new take on faith requires a different kind of personal ideology. In the realm of the motivated agent, moreover, changing values can influence life goals. If your new value system prioritizes alleviating the suffering of others, you may decide to pursue a degree in social work, or to become a public interest lawyer, or to live a simpler life that prioritizes people over material wealth. A great deal of the identity work we do in adolescence and young adulthood is about values and goals, as we strive to articulate a personal vision or dream for what we hope to accomplish in the future.

The Autobiographical Author

Even as the “I” continues to develop a sense of the “Me” as both a social actor and a motivated agent, a third standpoint for selfhood gradually emerges in the adolescent and early-adult years. The third perspective is a response to Erikson’s ( 1963 ) challenge of identity. According to Erikson, developing an identity involves more than the exploration of and commitment to life goals and values (the self as motivated agent), and more than committing to new roles and re-evaluating old traits (the self as social actor). It also involves achieving a sense of temporal continuity in life—a reflexive understanding of how I have come to be the person I am becoming , or put differently, how my past self has developed into my present self, and how my present self will, in turn, develop into an envisioned future self. In his analysis of identity formation in the life of the 15th-century Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Erikson ( 1958 ) describes the culmination of a young adult’s search for identity in this way:

“To be adult means among other things to see one’s own life in continuous perspective, both in retrospect and prospect. By accepting some definition of who he is, usually on the basis of a function in an economy, a place in the sequence of generations, and a status in the structure of society, the adult is able to selectively reconstruct his past in such a way that, step for step, it seems to have planned him, or better, he seems to have planned it . In this sense, psychologically we do choose our parents, our family history, and the history of our kings, heroes, and gods. By making them our own, we maneuver ourselves into the inner position of proprietors, of creators.”

— (Erikson, 1958, pp. 111–112; emphasis added).

In this rich passage, Erikson intimates that the development of a mature identity in young adulthood involves the I’s ability to construct a retrospective and prospective story about the Me ( McAdams, 1985 ). In their efforts to find a meaningful identity for life, young men and women begin “to selectively reconstruct” their past, as Erikson wrote, and imagine their future to create an integrative life story, or what psychologists today often call a narrative identity . A narrative identity is an internalized and evolving story of the self that reconstructs the past and anticipates the future in such a way as to provide a person’s life with some degree of unity, meaning, and purpose over time ( McAdams, 2008 ; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007 ). The self typically becomes an autobiographical author in the early-adult years, a way of being that is layered over the motivated agent, which is layered over the social actor. In order to provide life with the sense of temporal continuity and deep meaning that Erikson believed identity should confer, we must author a personalized life story that integrates our understanding of who we once were, who we are today, and who we may become in the future. The story helps to explain, for the author and for the author’s world, why the social actor does what it does and why the motivated agent wants what it wants, and how the person as a whole has developed over time, from the past’s reconstructed beginning to the future’s imagined ending.

By the time they are 5 or 6 years of age, children can tell well-formed stories about personal events in their lives ( Fivush, 2011 ). By the end of childhood, they usually have a good sense of what a typical biography contains and how it is sequenced, from birth to death ( Thomsen & Bernsten, 2008 ). But it is not until adolescence, research shows, that human beings express advanced storytelling skills and what psychologists call autobiographical reasoning ( Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ; McLean & Fournier, 2008 ). In autobiographical reasoning, a narrator is able to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing his or her own personal experiences. Adolescents may develop the ability to string together events into causal chains and inductively derive general themes about life from a sequence of chapters and scenes ( Habermas & de Silveira, 2008 ). For example, a 16-year-old may be able to explain to herself and to others how childhood experiences in her family have shaped her vocation in life. Her parents were divorced when she was 5 years old, the teenager recalls, and this caused a great deal of stress in her family. Her mother often seemed anxious and depressed, but she (the now-teenager when she was a little girl—the story’s protagonist) often tried to cheer her mother up, and her efforts seemed to work. In more recent years, the teenager notes that her friends often come to her with their boyfriend problems. She seems to be very adept at giving advice about love and relationships, which stems, the teenager now believes, from her early experiences with her mother. Carrying this causal narrative forward, the teenager now thinks that she would like to be a marriage counselor when she grows up.

Unlike children, then, adolescents can tell a full and convincing story about an entire human life, or at least a prominent line of causation within a full life, explaining continuity and change in the story’s protagonist over time. Once the cognitive skills are in place, young people seek interpersonal opportunities to share and refine their developing sense of themselves as storytellers (the I) who tell stories about themselves (the Me). Adolescents and young adults author a narrative sense of the self by telling stories about their experiences to other people, monitoring the feedback they receive from the tellings, editing their stories in light of the feedback, gaining new experiences and telling stories about those, and on and on, as selves create stories that, in turn, create new selves ( McLean et al., 2007 ). Gradually, in fits and starts, through conversation and introspection, the I develops a convincing and coherent narrative about the Me.

Contemporary research on the self as autobiographical author emphasizes the strong effect of culture on narrative identity ( Hammack, 2008 ). Culture provides a menu of favored plot lines, themes, and character types for the construction of self-defining life stories. Autobiographical authors sample selectively from the cultural menu, appropriating ideas that seem to resonate well with their own life experiences. As such, life stories reflect the culture, wherein they are situated as much as they reflect the authorial efforts of the autobiographical I.

As one example of the tight link between culture and narrative identity, McAdams ( 2013 ) and others (e.g., Kleinfeld, 2012 ) have highlighted the prominence of redemptive narratives in American culture. Epitomized in such iconic cultural ideals as the American dream, Horatio Alger stories, and narratives of Christian atonement, redemptive stories track the move from suffering to an enhanced status or state, while scripting the development of a chosen protagonist who journeys forth into a dangerous and unredeemed world ( McAdams, 2013 ). Hollywood movies often celebrate redemptive quests. Americans are exposed to similar narrative messages in self-help books, 12-step programs, Sunday sermons, and in the rhetoric of political campaigns. Over the past two decades, the world’s most influential spokesperson for the power of redemption in human lives may be Oprah Winfrey, who tells her own story of overcoming childhood adversity while encouraging others, through her media outlets and philanthropy, to tell similar kinds of stories for their own lives ( McAdams, 2013 ). Research has demonstrated that American adults who enjoy high levels of mental health and civic engagement tend to construct their lives as narratives of redemption, tracking the move from sin to salvation, rags to riches, oppression to liberation, or sickness/abuse to health/recovery ( McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997 ; McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001 ; Walker & Frimer, 2007 ). In American society, these kinds of stories are often seen to be inspirational.

At the same time, McAdams ( 2011 , 2013 ) has pointed to shortcomings and limitations in the redemptive stories that many Americans tell, which mirror cultural biases and stereotypes in American culture and heritage. McAdams has argued that redemptive stories support happiness and societal engagement for some Americans, but the same stories can encourage moral righteousness and a naïve expectation that suffering will always be redeemed. For better and sometimes for worse, Americans seem to love stories of personal redemption and often aim to assimilate their autobiographical memories and aspirations to a redemptive form. Nonetheless, these same stories may not work so well in cultures that espouse different values and narrative ideals ( Hammack, 2008 ). It is important to remember that every culture offers its own storehouse of favored narrative forms. It is also essential to know that no single narrative form captures all that is good (or bad) about a culture. In American society, the redemptive narrative is but one of many different kinds of stories that people commonly employ to make sense of their lives.

What is your story? What kind of a narrative are you working on? As you look to the past and imagine the future, what threads of continuity, change, and meaning do you discern? For many people, the most dramatic and fulfilling efforts to change the self happen when the I works hard, as an autobiographical author, to construct and, ultimately, to tell a new story about the Me. Storytelling may be the most powerful form of self-transformation that human beings have ever invented. Changing one’s life story is at the heart of many forms of psychotherapy and counseling, as well as religious conversions, vocational epiphanies, and other dramatic transformations of the self that people often celebrate as turning points in their lives ( Adler, 2012 ). Storytelling is often at the heart of the little changes, too, minor edits in the self that we make as we move through daily life, as we live and experience life, and as we later tell it to ourselves and to others.

For human beings, selves begin as social actors, but they eventually become motivated agents and autobiographical authors, too. The I first sees itself as an embodied actor in social space; with development, however, it comes to appreciate itself also as a forward-looking source of self-determined goals and values, and later yet, as a storyteller of personal experience, oriented to the reconstructed past and the imagined future. To “know thyself” in mature adulthood, then, is to do three things: (a) to apprehend and to perform with social approval my self-ascribed traits and roles, (b) to pursue with vigor and (ideally) success my most valued goals and plans, and (c) to construct a story about life that conveys, with vividness and cultural resonance, how I became the person I am becoming, integrating my past as I remember it, my present as I am experiencing it, and my future as I hope it to be.

Text Attribution

Media attributions.

• Me in the mirror
• The Shakespeare, High Street, Lincoln

The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.

Sigmund Freud’s conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module’s notion of “the I,” Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.

A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people’s self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.

The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.

The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.

Emerging around the age of 4, the child’s understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.

Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child’s developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.

The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.

Sometimes used synonymously with the term “self,” identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson’s conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.

The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.

The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).

The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.

An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.

The ability, typically developed in adolescence, to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing one’s own personal experiences.

The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.

Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.

An Introduction to Social Psychology Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Edison State University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The state of research on ego identity: A review and appraisal

• Published: September 1978
• Volume 7 , pages 223–251, ( 1978 )

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• Edmund Bourne  

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Considerable research on ego identity has appeared over the past 15 years, indicating the need for an overall review. Part I commences by considering the complexity of Erikson's concept and suggesting several different theoretical contexts in which it has been used. The validity of investigators' attempts to operationalize the concept “ego identity” is assumed to depend in part upon their interpretations of its meaning. The subsequent review of empirical literature is organized according to different procedures which have been used to measure ego identity. A first section summarizes and evaluates research utilizing Q-sort and self-report questionnaire measures, while a second considers the large number of investigations that have employed James Marcia's Identity Status Interview. The latter group of studies are ordered according to the type of dependent variable (e.g., cognitive, behavioral, personality, developmental) examined in relation to ego identity status (i.e., achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, diffusion). Part II of the review, to appear in the next issue of this journal, will recapitulate the identity status literature, present an overall evaluation of the identity status paradigm, and suggest a number of issues for future research.

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Support for this study comes from research training grant No. 5-T32MH14668-02 awarded to Dr. D. Offer by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence jointly sponsored by the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training of Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center and the Committee on Human Development of the University of Chicago. Present research interests include adolescent ego development and epistemological/methodological issues in personality theory and measurement.

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Bourne, E. The state of research on ego identity: A review and appraisal. J Youth Adolescence 7 , 223–251 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537976

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Received : 20 March 1978

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537976

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Identity encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self. This amalgamation creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new facets are developed and incorporated into one's identity.

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Everyone struggles with existential questions such as, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want my future self to be?” One reason why may be that the answer is so complex.

Identity includes the many relationships people cultivate, such as their identity as a child, friend, partner, and parent. It involves external characteristics over which a person has little or no control, such as height, race, or socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinions, moral attitudes, and religious beliefs, all of which guide the choices one makes on a daily basis.

People who are overly concerned with the impression they make, or who feel a core aspect of themselves, such as gender or sexuality , is not being expressed, can struggle acutely with their identity. Reflecting on the discrepancy between who one is and who one wants to be can be a powerful catalyst for change.

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Effect of parental rearing styles on adolescent ego identity: the mediating role of involutionary attitudes

1 School of Education, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China

2 Qianhuang Experimental Senior High School, Changzhou, China

Changan Sun

Geovanny Genaro Reivan Ortiz, Catholic University of Cuenca, Ecuador

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Previous studies have found that negative parental rearing styles can negatively predict the acquisition of ego identity, while it has not been discussed whether the overcompetitive attitudes, a stable personality, will further hinder their ego identity development under the model of educational involutionary. The study used the Overcompetitive Attitude Scale, the Brief Parental Rearing Styles Questionnaire, and the Ego Identity Status Scale to investigate 550 young students in a school in Suzhou in order to explore the influence of parental rearing styles on adolescents’ ego identity development and the role of involutional attitudes. The results showed that: (1) Adolescents’ overcompetitive attitude was positively predicted by parental rejection and overprotection, while it was negatively predicted by parental emotional warmth. (2) Parental emotional warmth significantly predicted adolescents’ ego identity status more favorably than parental rejection, overprotection, and overcompetitive attitude. (3) Overcompetitive attitude plays a partial intermediary role between parental rearing style and ego identity.

Introduction

In July 2021, with the implementation of the “double reduction “policy, various regions have successively launched the “double reduction “work and achieved positive results. This policy has extraordinary significance for the entire basic education community and even the society. However, due to the imbalance of educational resources, school education is also difficult to meet the needs of students’ heterogeneous learning. The term “involution” has been used to describe or explain contemporary issues in education in recent years. It is defined as the conundrum of increasing internal consumption costs without comparable rewards——Despite spending more on education, parents’ anxiety levels are rising. Children’s schoolwork is getting busier and the exams are getting more complicated ( Long and Zhao, 2022 ). More and more elaborate examinations and score-oriented evaluation mechanisms not only increase the difficulty of learning competition, but also constrain the development of students’ subjectivity and literacy ( Xu and Ma, 2021 ). In the involutional environment, parents’ high expectations and strict requirements force children to bear greater academic pressure. Therefore, parenting anxiety has become an important factor in aggravating involution. The prisoner’s dilemma leads to the transition from academic competition to excessive competition, which not only reflects the alienation of the essence of education by excessive competition, but also has a negative impact on the physical and mental health of young people. Intense learning competition and parental anxiety are the external manifestations of educational involution, and the psychological and behavioral problems of adolescents are the internal manifestations of involution.

According to research, a fiercely competitive learning atmosphere is detrimental to students’ non-cognitive skills ( Ito-Morales and Morales-Cabezas, 2021 ). This may make unpleasant feelings like despair and anxiety worse, which could impede the growth of the body and mind ( Posselt, 2021 ). Through continual competing comparisons, students are more prone to lose confidence and even develop learned helplessness, which lowers their willingness to engage in self-exploration and invest in the future ( Gao, 2020 ). The majority of parents are instigators and implementers of involution, using “reward feedback mechanisms” to maintain their children’s involutional educational model and adopting an educational strategy that caters to their children’s academic competitiveness. This results in the development of unfavorable competitive attitude ( Zhang, 2022 ). Teenagers are subject to the impact and influence of psychological pressure from the learning competition environment while accepting social norms. Psychological crisis is easy to make them confused and at a loss. However, parents are eager to see their children grow up, and their anxiety is gradually transmitted to their children through negative parenting styles and poor parent–child communication relationships. Undoubtedly, it has once again increased the psychological burden of students and hindered their self-identity development and the formation of positive personality traits. As a result, this study aims to shed more light on the relationship between parental rearing styles and adolescents’ ego identity development by examining the mediating role of overcompetitive attitude. This will help us better understand whether the overcompetitive attitude formed by people in the mode of educational involution as a stable personality tendency will further impede their ego identity development.

Parental rearing styles and adolescent ego identity

Parental emotional support, as an important psychological resource for children, greatly affects the individual’s self-confidence in the face of stress and their ability to solve problems, prompting individuals to explore themselves and challenge difficulties ( Sheldon and Epstein, 2005 ). Negative parenting styles such as parental control and excessive preference will cause individuals to produce more negative self-concepts, which in turn will lead to unreasonable evaluation and cognition of themselves ( Aldhafri, 2011 ; Hughes, 2011 ; Molina, 2015 ). The social construction model of resilience holds that resilience is a quality of ability formed with the process of individual self-identity construction ( Ungar and Theron, 2020 ). If self-identity is well constructed, individuals will form a high level of psychological resilience, so that the dilemma can be solved. Yu and Wang (2019) also pointed out that in the middle school stage, the focus of mental health education is to help teenagers master the skills of self-cognition and emotional management, form good will quality, and establish a positive attitude and healthy interpersonal relationship in order to better face setbacks ( Yu and Wang, 2019 ). Therefore, the establishment of self-identity is the most important psychological development task in the adolescent stage. Whether the development of identity is good or not is not only closely related to the individual’s personality improvement and healthy growth, but also related to the individual’s adaptation to social life, the realization of self-worth and the experience of happiness. Individuals with high self-identity will have a clearer understanding of themselves and a stronger sense of self-identity. In the face of the psychological crisis caused by parental anxiety and excessive competition, they can better mobilize psychological resources to cope with it.

According to several studies, the factors that affect the establishment of adolescents’ ego identity mainly include family education, social environment, academic environment, personality characteristics, causal orientation, etc. ( An, 2007 ; Wang and Tong, 2018 ), of which parental rearing style is one of the most important factors ( Masud et al., 2015 ). Parents are the first socializing agent responsible for transmitting the values, beliefs, and attitudes that will shape the personality of adult children ( Palacios et al., 2022 ). In view of the relationship and interaction between parents and children, and the influence of family environment on children, Darling and Steinberg proposed that parenting styles include the influence of parents on children’s emotional expression and behavior, as well as family atmosphere and family rules with cross-situational stability ( Darling and Steinberg, 1993 ). Prevatt pointed out that parenting style is composed of relatively stable parenting attitudes and beliefs, which reflect parents’ values and behavioral expectations for their children ( Prevatt, 2003 ). Research shows that parents’ active participation in parenting can protect their children from adaptive difficulties and problematic behaviors ( Omari and Papaleontiou-Louca, 2020 ), and harmonious parent–child relationship can provide emotional support for individuals seeking self-development, and promote the adaptive development of adolescent identity ( Wang et al., 2017 ; Moor et al., 2019 ). However, bad parenting styles, such as parents’ refusal, will affect children’s self-differentiation, which will make them sensitive to setbacks, reduce their level of self-acceptance, and hinder their academic and ego identity development ( Cong et al., 2022 ); Over-protection or psychological control by parents can easily make children weak in character, hinder the development of children’s self-esteem, and form negative self-concept and problem behaviors ( Chang et al., 2022 ). Individuals’ sense of identity and self-worth will be diminished if individuals cannot get enough warmth from their parents’ attitudes ( Yao et al., 2022 ). It can be seen that family warmth and support are the key to teenagers’ psychological growth and personality development. At present, there is no lack of research on parental rearing styles and ego identity, however, it is more practical to explore based on the specific cultural background of “education involution’’.

Parental rearing styles, overcompetitive attitude, and adolescent ego identity

From the perspective of pedagogy, ‘involution’ is a self-blocking state under excessive competition ( Lu, 2021 ), and a fierce zero-sum competition phenomenon in a limited space ( Chen and Bao, 2022 ). Sampson (1988) proposed that excessive competitiveness is caused by the bad social values and external environment of self-made individualism. It is a personality tendency that individuals pay too much attention to winning and losing while ignoring the realization of self-worth in the face of competitive situations. Therefore, in view of the scholars’ definition of involution and related research results, this study uses excessive competitive attitude to quantify.

The study found that the individual’s competitive attitude is closely related to family environment, personality characteristics, economic conditions and other factors, among which parenting style and parent–child communication will have an impact on children’s competitive attitude. Parental rearing styles can affect children’s competitive attitudes through various verbal and non-verbal forms ( Li and Yan, 2017 ). Specifically, excessive parental control and directive education can lead to children’s lack of autonomy and self-confidence, thus showing too cautious and negative in competition; encouraging children to explore, try and praise their efforts and achievements helps to develop a positive competitive attitude. Individuals’ perception of parental emotional support can positively predict their benign competitive attitude ( Chen et al., 2012 ). On the contrary, negative parenting styles such as refusal to deny or severe punishment will make children feel inferior and insecure. They are forced to meet their parents’ expectations or succumb to their parents’ values and indulge in excessive internal friction competition, trying to gain recognition and appreciation by obtaining rankings and rewards. This excessive competitive attitude will not only have a negative impact on the physical and mental health of individuals, but also affect their ability to interact and cooperate with others. In the long run, it may lead to the limitation of personal development in academic and social aspects.

Some studies have also suggested that competition is an indispensable part of the process of constructing self-concept. Through competition, individuals can compare their own abilities and performance with others, so as to more clearly understand their own strengths and weaknesses ( Harter and Bukowski, 2012 ). However, excessive competition may also undermine individuals’ self-satisfaction, leading them to focus too much on external evaluation and ignore their own internal needs and emotional state ( Yang et al., 2018 ). In the process of guiding individuals to participate in competition, we need to balance the relationship between competition and cooperation, and pay attention to the internal psychological needs of individuals to promote their self-worth. Positive competitive attitude was positively correlated with social adaptation ( Park and Baek, 2018 ; Yang and Robinson, 2018 ), which means that positive competition helps teenagers achieve growth and progress in self-exploration, and interpersonal relationships can also be well developed. Individuals with high over-competition have lower levels of self-esteem ( Zhang et al., 2021 ), which may hinder individuals from fully expressing and exploring themselves and trigger more self-esteem rumination and identity problems ( Gardner and Davis, 2013 ; Yang et al., 2018 ). Therefore, it is very important to find a balance point in the competition. Educators and parents should cultivate children to form a good sense of competition, encourage children to believe in their own ability, and avoid the negative impact of excessive and vicious competition. In this way, they can better understand themselves and others, better adapt to society and life so as to achieve higher life satisfaction and happiness.

The current study

Parental caring was found to be positively associated with current self-involvement and future engagement ambitions, while parental rejection and indifference were negatively related to same outcomes ( Wu et al., 2014 ). The study found that competitive attitudes have an impact on the psychological well-being of individuals ( Sheng et al., 2015 ). Overcompetitive attitude negatively predicts individuals’ clarity of self-concept ( Yang et al., 2018 ). This suggests that there is a strong link between overcompetitive attitude and the development of ego identity in adolescents. Competitive attitudes of secondary school students are significantly associated with parental rearing styles ( Li and Yan, 2017 ). The research also revealed that those with a competitive attitude are more likely to enjoy and value cooperation, as well as emotional contact with others. Can this effectively lessen the negative effects of poor parental on the development of their ego identity? Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the three variables through quantitative research.

Materials and methods

Participants.

The study was conducted by utilizing the cross-sectional design. The participants of the study were recruited by convenience sampling. The participants consisted of 512 adolescents (246 females, 266 males) attending two schools in Suzhou. The participants’ ages were between 12 and 18 ( M  = 15.46 years, SD = 1.76 years). Of the participants, 92 (18.0%) were 7th graders, 96 (18.8%) were 8th graders, 64 (12.5%) were 9th graders, 92 (18.0%) were 10th graders, 92 (18.0%) were 11th graders, and 76 (14.8%) were 12th graders.

Competitive Attitudes Scale – China version

The scale was revised by Chen et al. (2003) , which consists of two dimensions of 27 items, positive and overcompetitive attitudes. The participants indicated their response on a 5-point scale (1 = ‘ Strongly disagree ’ to 5 = ‘ Strongly agree ’) with higher scores indicating a higher overcompetitive attitude level. A sample item is “The failure of competition makes me feel that the value of being a person is reduced.” Cronbach’s alpha of the overcompetitive scale was found to be 0.71 for this study. The degree of learning involution in this study was captured by the overcompetitive attitude scale.

Short form parental style questionnaire (short form-Egna Minnen av. Barndoms Uppfostran, S-EMBU)

It was measured with 21 items on the Short Form Parental Style Questionnaire. The S-EMBU was designed by Arrindell (1983) in 1999 to determine parental rearing styles and revised by Jiang et al. (2010) . It was divided into three dimensions: “rejection,” “emotional warmth” and “overprotective.” A sample item is “Father praises me.” It consists of a 4-point Likert-type response scale, where 1 is Almost never true and 4 is Almost always true , and. Higher scores on this scale indicate more parents’ behavior in a certain dimension. The Cronbach alpha of father’s rejection was 0.93. The Cronbach alpha of mother’s rejection was 0.93. The Cronbach alpha of father’s emotional warmth was 0.92. The Cronbach alpha of mother’s emotional warmth was 0.92. The Cronbach alpha of father’s overprotection was 0.72. The Cronbach’s alpha of maternal overprotection was 0.72, and the internal consistency coefficient of the overall Cronbach’s alpha of the scale in this study was 0.73.

Ego Identity Status Scale

The Ego Identity Status Scale, originally created by Jia (1983) and later translated into Chinese by Zhang (2000) from its Japanese version, is a 12-item scale divided into three dimensions: “present self-involvement,” “past crisis” and “desire for future involvement.” A sample item is “I am working hard to achieve my goal.” It consists of a 6-point Likert-type response scale, where 1 is Completely disagree and 6 is Completely agree . It’s to measure six states of ego identity, including Achieved (A), Achieved-Foreclosure (A-F), Foreclosure (F), Moratorium (M), Moratorium-Diffusion (M-D), and Diffusion (D).Cronbach’s alpha of the overcompetitive scale was found to be 0.72 for this study.

The participants were recruited from two schools in Suzhou during the 2022–2023 academic year. The researcher firstly received permission from the principals of the schools, and signed informed con-sent was obtained from the participants. The participants were informed about the study’s process and aim before the data collection. Then, the instruments of the study were administered to the students by the researcher during school hours in their classrooms. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, and the participants were independent on withdrawing from the current study at any time. The researcher explained how they could fill out the surveys. The participants completed the surveys of the research in approximately 15 min.

Data analysis

The data of the present study were analyzed by programs of SPSS 25.0 and Process 4.0. First, descriptive statistics (skewness, kurtosis, mean, and standard deviation) were examined. Second, correlation coefficients between the investigated variables were explored to capture the relationships. Third, path analyses were carried out to examine whether the relationship between parental rearing styles and the development of adolescents’ ego identity was mediated by overcompetitive attitude, as well as to explore the direct relationships among parental rearing styles, ego identity, and overcompetitive attitude. The bootstrapping mediation technique was used with 5,000 resamples and bias-corrected bootstrap 95% confidence intervals to test the significance of the mediating role ( Preacher and Hayes, 2008 ).

Descriptive statistics and correlations

Descriptive statistics were presented in Table 1 . The findings of correlations demonstrated that parental rejection, overprotective parental and overcompetitive attitude were positively associated ( r  = 0.14, 0.16, 0.23, 0.11, respectively, p  < 0.01), while parental emotional warmth was negatively associated with overcompetitive attitude ( r  = −0.11, −0.13, respectively, p  < 0.05). At the same time, there was a negative relationship between overcompetitive attitude and ego identity status ( r  = −0.17, −0.16, −0.18, respectively, p  < 0.01). Next, Parental rejection, parental overprotection, and ego identity status dimensions were negatively related ( r  = −0.65, −0.67, −0.32, −0.33, −0.69, −0.70, −0.53, −0.51, −0.28, −0.24, −0.52, −0.49, respectively, p  < 0.01), while parental emotional warmth was positively related with those dimensions ( r  = 0.72, 0.72, 0.34, 0.42, 0.70, 0.73, respectively, p  < 0.001).

Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of each variable.

N  = 512; M, mean; SD, standard deviation; r , correlation coefficient. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001, 1-Father rejection, 2-Mother rejection, 3-Father emotional warmth, 4-Mother emotional warmth, 5-Father overprotection, 6-Mother overprotection; 7-Present self-involvement, 8-Past crisis, 9-Future self-involvement desire; 10-Overcompetitive attitude.

Examining of the mediating role of overcompetitive attitude

The path analyses were performed to examine the direct relationships among the investigated variables and the mediating effect of overcompetitive attitude in the total sample ( Figures 1 – 6 ), the absence of 0 in the interval indicates statistical significance ( Erceghurn and Mirosevich, 2008 ). Parental style was used as a predictor variable, ego identity status as an outcome variable and overcompetitive attitude as a mediating variable. The findings demonstrated that father rejection was related positively to overcompetitive attitude ( β  = 0.143, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.045, 0.179]) and overcompetitive attitude was related negatively to present self-involvement, past crisis and future desire to invest ( β  = −0.077, p  < 0.05; β  = −0.122, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.096, p  < 0.01; 95% CI = [−0.032, −0.002]; 95%CI = [−0.023, −0.004]; 95%CI = [−0.033, −0.005]), indicating that the association between ego identity and father rejection was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude. Mother rejection positively predicted overcompetitive attitude ( β  = 0.159, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.055, 0.184]), and overcompetitive attitude negatively predicted past crisis and future desire to commit ( β  = −0.104, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.081, p  < 0.05; 95%CI = [−0.024, −0.003]; 95%CI = [−0.030, −0.005]), indicating that the association between ego identity and mother rejection was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between father rejection and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between mother overprotection and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between mother rejection and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between father emotional warmth and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between mother emotional warmth and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

The mediation effect model of overcompetitive attitude between father overprotection and ego identity. The factor loadings are standardized. * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001.

Father emotional warmth negatively predicted overcompetitive attitude ( β  = −0.107, p  < 0.05; 95%CI = [−0.127, −0.014])and overcompetitive attitude negatively predicted present self-involvement, past crisis and future desire for input ( β  = −0.093, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.129, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.184, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.002, 0.025]; 95%CI = [0.002, 0.017]; 95%CI = [0.003, 0.026]), indicating that the association between ego identity and father’s emotional warmth was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude. Mother emotional warmth negatively predicted overcompetitive attitude ( β  = −0.128, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [−0.144, −0.028]), and overcompetitive attitude negatively predicted present self-involvement, past crisis, and future desire for involvement ( β  = −0.079, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.112, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.096, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.002, 0.026]; 95%CI = [0.002, 0.018]; 95%CI = [0.004, 0.025]), indicating that the association between ego identity and mother’s emotional warmth was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude.

Father overprotection positively predicted overcompetitive attitude ( β  = 0.143, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.129, 0.282]) and overcompetitive attitude negatively predicted past crises ( β  = −0.104, p  < 0.05; 95%CI = [−0.037, −0.005]), indicating that the association between ego identity and father overprotection was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude. Mother overprotection positively predicted overcompetitive attitude ( β  = 0.113, p  < 0.01; 95%CI = [0.024, 0.181]), and overcompetitive attitude negatively predicted present self-involvement, past crisis and future desire for input ( β  = −0.113, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.136, p  < 0.01; β  = −0.133, p  < 0.001; 95%CI = [−0.042, −0.004]; 95%CI = [−0.025, −0.003]; 95%CI = [−0.042, −0.006]), indicating that the association between ego identity and mother overprotection was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude.

Ecosystem theory suggests that the family environment is crucial for individuals’ early growth ( Rosa et al., 2013 ), and parents shape their kids’ personalities and social development through their educational pursuits ( Shan et al., 2020 ). Different parenting styles have different predictive effects on individual self-identity and self-expression. Children who are fully cared for and supported by their parents in the growth environment usually have positive energy and desire to explore, and they are more confident and enthusiastic about the future. Even in the face of setbacks, they tend to attribute success to their own efforts and abilities, and attribute failure to external factors. This positive mentality and attribution style can often form a positive reinforcement mechanism to help individuals better adapt to setbacks and failures, reduce negative emotions and frustration, and then enhance their investment in the current task and their desire to explore the future, and be more satisfied with their lives, which is consistent with the research results of Chen (2020) . Adolescents perceive good emotional support and family atmosphere, resulting in positive cognition, which contributes to the improvement of individual self-efficacy and the enhancement of psychological resilience ( Huang et al., 2020 ). Although classical studies identify the authoritative parenting style as the best parental strategy, Parents’ understanding, support and warmth can promote their children to achieve a good orientation toward others in terms of cognitive and affective empathy and a good self-evaluation in terms of self-concept ( Fuentes et al., 2022 ). High parental warmth is always positive for greater adjustment and less psychological mal adjustment, which was found to benefit professional self-concept ( Alcaide et al., 2023 ; Villarejo et al., 2024 ). Self-awareness theory states that such individuals will actively create social support when they are frustrated and take full initiative to cope with psychological crises. This result confirms the theory of family functioning, which states that a scientific and rational parental style plays an important role in childrens’ growth and is conducive to the formation of positive psychological qualities such as high self-esteem, self-confidence and resilience ( Li and Gan, 2011 ).

By comparing the differences in the influence of parenting styles on adolescents’ self-identity in each model, it is found that the total effect value of mother rejection is higher than that of father rejection. First of all, due to role cognition and gender differences, the thinking logic of fathers in dealing with problems is very different from that of mothers. When solving parent–child conflicts, more rational methods will be adopted. Although mothers are emotionally delicate, they sometimes adopt extreme ways to make children feel more rejection and rejection, thus generating a sense of distance and negative emotions. In addition, the father who is unknown and reticent often devotes his energy to work. The mother who is more involved in the upbringing is constantly ‘nagging’ for the children’s good, which leads to the gradual formation of parent–child conflicts and even further intensification, thus having a greater impact on the development of adolescents’ self-identity. Secondly, father’s emotional warmth has a greater impact on adolescents’ self-identity development than mother’s emotional warmth. The possible reason is that in the current family structure of China, more and more fathers are aware of the importance of raising children, and they have already broken the image of ‘strict father’. In addition, with the stereotype of ‘loving mother’, children feel more sensitive to the care from fathers than mothers. Good education from fathers can be a guide for children’s mind. At the same time, the father has the image characteristics of bravery, tenacity and strong sense of responsibility. The children will feel more strength and support, so as to dare to take risks without losing stability, actively explore themselves, and better adapt to the social environment and cope with pressure. This is consistent with the results of Miri and Limor (2018) . Father often get along with children can make them easy to form a sense of security and self-esteem in interpersonal relationships, so as to get along with others. The difference in parenting formed by gender roles will subtly affect children’s way of doing things and judgment, so it can make up for the weak links in mother’s education. Therefore, the father’s emotional warmth has a far-reaching impact on the establishment of children’s identity.

The study found that the mean score of the overcompetitive attitude sample was 3.50, which was significantly higher than the median score of 2.5, and that the level of over-competence was at the upper middle level, indicating a high level of current involution in adolescent learning. Structural equation modeling revealed that overcompetitive attitude mediated the relationship between parental style and ego identity, and that overcompetitive attitude was negatively associated with past crises, present self-involvement and future investment aspirations. Psychological research has found that parental psychological control over children and adolescent anxiety are causally related to each other ( Cong et al., 2019 ). Teenagers today are constantly overly focused on the results because they are dealing with the psychological weight of academic pressure, parental expectations, and personal growth. Adolescents with overcompetitive attitude have more negative social life events, while emotional stability and high self-esteem are significantly associated with positive competitive attitude ( Xu et al., 2018 ). When individuals focus on improving themselves during competition, they create a new perception of themselves, are more able to explore their potential, and are more self-aware, all of which contribute to the growth of homogeneity. Whereas in ‘involution’ the experience of self is always linked to winning and losing, and the self is based on comparison with others, the experience of failure in learning leads to a negative view of oneself and prevents further exploration of the ego identity ( Crocetti et al., 2016 ; Gerber et al., 2018 ).

In the context of learning involution, adolescents are prone to self-doubt and no longer have expectations for the future. Adolescents also gradually become more conscious of themselves and increasingly desire external recognition at the same time. Parental rejection can stunt children’s personality growth and lessen their capacity for positive perception and experience ( Khaleque, 2013 ). It is challenging for children to establish a positive self-concept since they feel that their parents do not appreciate or recognize them ( Shrout and Weigel, 2020 ; Li and Liu, 2021 ). This eventually results in a diminished sense of self-awareness and self-worth ( Nie and Gan, 2017 ). For the child, this is undoubtedly a negative “setback.” Parental overprotection can result in a lack of autonomy, making it difficult for children to adapt to the environment and develop ego identity. Children are forced by their parents’ expectations or values and fall into excessive internal friction competition, which makes it difficult to establish academic self-concept clarity and objective self-cognition, which is consistent with the research results of Liu et al. (2019) and others. The emotional support provided by parents makes it easier for individuals to be satisfied in terms of sense of value, and pays more attention to the improvement of self-ability, which is conducive to the formation of a benign competitive attitude. They are more willing to cooperate with their peers and actively participate in self-exploration activities with others. Feel the pleasure of self-improvement, even for the failure of competition can make a correct and objective evaluation. Therefore, in order to enable students to successfully adapt to the society, it is crucial for parents to guide their children to develop a correct view of academic competition, with self-improvement and potential development as the goal, and not to focus excessively on winning and losing to the point where they base their self-worth on social comparisons., so as to increase their opportunities to experience and explore various roles, and have a positive expectation for the future to promote their self-identity development.

The current study provided significant implications. Theoretically, this study of adolescents indicated that the relationship between parental rearing styles and adolescent ego identity was partially mediated by overcompetitive attitude. This result presents a more comprehensive understanding of the development of adolescent ego identity. Practically, this result is promising for more effective interventions aimed at preventing ego identity collusion among adolescents from the perspective of system theory. First, parents should set a good example and establish an equal relationship with their children, change the concept of education, and encourage children to establish a healthy competitive attitude with the support of emotional warmth. Second, schools can focus on developing some courses to strengthen students’ self-exploration, create a relaxed and harmonious learning atmosphere and form educational cooperation with parents. Last but not least, advocating and guiding a positive mainstream value, a society full of positive values can provide stronger support for youth self-growth than a society full of cutthroat competition or self-involvement.

In conclusion, this study that aimed to explore the relationships between parental rearing styles, overcompetitive attitude, and ego identity in adolescents found both significant associations among the examined variables and the mediating role of overcompetitive attitude in the relationship between parental rearing styles and adolescent ego identity. Therefore, the present findings may contribute to the existing literature on adolescent ego identity by exploring factors that support or prevent the development of ego identity, hence identifying viable goal intervention pathways.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving humans were approved by Academic Ethics Review Committee of Suzhou University of Science and Technology Academic Committee. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin.

Author contributions

CS and BD: Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. YD: Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Investigation, Software, Writing – original draft.

Funding Statement

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32100841 and 32100842), the MOE Project of Humanities and Social Sciences Grant (20YJC190002), the Project of Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (20YJC008), Jiangsu University Philosophy and Social Science Research Project (2019SJA1267), and the Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Universities.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Becoming Indian

A novelist considers how his sense of national identity has changed..

This article appears in the Spring 2024 print issue of FP. Read more from the issue.

This article appears in the Spring 2024 issue of Foreign Policy. Subscribe now to read every story from the issue.

I was born and grew up in India, and I’m trying to remember when I became Indian.

In the summer of 1986, a police constable on a bicycle came to my home in the city of Patna to conduct an inquiry. This visit was in response to my application for a passport. Two weeks later, my passport was ready. I was 23 years old, preparing to come to the United States to attend a graduate program in literature. Did I first become Indian when I acquired my passport?

If so, it would be paradoxical that I became Indian at the very moment I was most eager to get away from India.

But there must have been earlier occasions.

I was 8 when Bangladesh was liberated with the help of the Indian Army in December 1971. I had a vague sense that the Indian armed forces, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had beaten the Pakistanis and that they had also outfoxed the rotund man with thick glasses in newspaper photographs, Henry Kissinger. Maybe it was then that I adopted my nascent national identity?

When I was a little older, my father’s job took us to Bokaro, a city in eastern India where the Russians had helped build a steel factory. One day, I met the Russian engineers and their families at an event where they were giving out gifts, including pins with Vladimir Lenin’s head on them. This first real encounter with foreigners, maybe this was the day when I thought of myself as Indian?

I’m forgetting something.

From my early childhood, my family would travel from our ancestral village in Champaran to a nearby town across the border in Nepal. This was in pre-liberalization India, when markets were closed to foreign products. In Nepal, we could buy Chinese and Japanese products. For our trip back, women hid new chiffon sarees under their garments. In my pockets, I would have anything from a new transistor radio to a sleek camera or just a pack of peppermint-flavored Wrigley’s gum. My first typewriter, a red portable Brother, was bought during one of these trips not long after I had entered college.

Passports were not required during these visits to Nepal. The cycle rickshaws we hired trundled past the customs crossing without rigorous checks. But what I want to say is that the knowledge that I was breaking the law (smuggling!) weighed on me more than the issue of national difference.

Now that I think about it, a sense of a self and the idea of this self also inhabiting a particular place, a place as large as a country, only came to me when I saw the outlines of a national literature, that is, when I had grasped the notion of a body of literature that told our stories. In other words, sometime during my late teens I became Indian because I had acquired a complex language—a gift given by writers who had come before me—that described the people and places around me.

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I admired the grasp that Khushwant Singh, Dom Moraes, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Ved Mehta, and a young Salman Rushdie had on a broad but also intimate language that established them as Indian, one that embraced history, landscape, people, and their mixed identities. Singh’s 1956 novel, Train to Pakistan , in particular was instructive about the history of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs having lived together peaceably and then, caught in the cataclysm of history, transforming into each other’s murderers. Even V.S. Naipaul, born in distant Trinidad, was Indian because he had so accurately, if dyspeptically, depicted the spaces in which was staged the drama of our large and untidy collective identity.

I should clarify that I wasn’t at all fluent in that language myself. In fact, I felt quite inadequate. In the 1980s, when I entered my 20s, India saw riots, a huge industrial disaster in Bhopal, and the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the killings of Sikhs that followed it. But it was as if I was looking at these events standing mutely behind thick glass. More years would pass before I could employ a vocabulary to communicate in that language of national belonging and translate that trauma onto the page in hopes of a reckoning.

A planned effort by an organized, ultranationalist party had unleashed the demon of hatred in Indian society.

By the time a Hindu mob destroyed the old mosque in the city of Ayodhya on Dec. 6, 1992, I was ready to speak out. I recognized that a planned effort by an organized, ultranationalist party had unleashed the demon of hatred in Indian society. I was finishing my doctoral studies at the time and saw zealots from my own Hindu community in the United States donating gold bricks for the construction of a temple on the disputed site. In the books I wrote over the ensuing decade, Passport Photos and then Bombay-London-New York , I argued that in the Indian diaspora, the soft emotion of nostalgia had been turned into the hard emotion of fundamentalism.

In the early 1990s, I was also training to be a scholar of postcolonial literature—a term describing, for the most part, the literature of countries in Africa and Asia that had achieved freedom from colonialism. My peers included people from Ethiopia, Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. When we read, say, Rushdie or Jamaica Kincaid, Nadine Gordimer or Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Edward Said or Nawal El Saadawi, we were focusing on critiques of colonialism and its lingering history.

The freedom struggles of our own countries had been carried out under the flag of nationalism. But decades after independence, it was difficult to ignore the actions of our own governments run by the privileged and the powerful. We faulted our own postcolonial states for having produced parodies of nationalism.

But this produced a peculiar problem. If one said anything negative about India, for instance, one invited the charge of representing the “colonial mindset.” There was the criticism of writing in English, also that of living abroad. All variety of narrow nationalists accused my field of postcolonial studies of being inauthentic, a prisoner of the Western mentality that had traditionally looked down on the countries of the East. This situation was rich with irony.

In 2002, riots in the state of Gujarat killed, by official count, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus, though other estimates place the total number killed as high as 2,000. The chief minister of Gujarat at that time was Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was also in power in New Delhi. In the aftermath of the riots, I reported from Ahmedabad’s relief camps for Muslim refugees and carried on my investigations into religious violence elsewhere, including in various parts of Kashmir. My writings earned me a place on a “hit list” run by Hindu ultranationalists in the United States, and BJP supporters accused me of being anti-Hindu and anti-India. India’s right wing saw me as a foreigner.

We faulted our own postcolonial states for having produced parodies of nationalism.

The Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore, a part of whose song “Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata” was adopted as India’s national anthem, wrote in a 1917 essay that “nationalism is a great menace.” The sense of a national identity always relies on the idea of an “other” who is the enemy; in the case of India, it is not only a traditional rival such as Pakistan but also the enemy within, the non-Hindu, most commonly the Muslim. Since the BJP’s rise to power under Modi in 2014, Muslims have been fixed as that dirty, undesirable “other.” In the nationalist consciousness, they are the true non-Indians.

Tagore was warning us against what he called “social slavery” that “impels us to make the life of our fellow-beings a burden to them where they differ from us even in such a thing as their choice of food.” More than a century after Tagore wrote his essay, his words appear like grim prophecy when mobs have lynched Muslims in different parts of India on the suspicion of eating beef. In 2014, Modi supporters attempted to send prominent writer U.R. Ananthamurthy a ticket for a flight to Pakistan when he expressed strong opposition to the election of Modi and the BJP that year. The Hindu ultra- nationalists would like to send to Pakistan—alongside India’s Muslims—all those Indian citizens who dare dissent and whom they call “anti-nationals.”

This year’s inauguration of the Ram temple at the site of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya, with the prime minister administering the rites, achieved the BJP’s goal of deifying the Indian nationalist identity as Hindu. The frenzied state-aided celebrations, the kowtowing in the media, and the establishment of a mythical history as a near-constitutional fact put the seal of majoritarianism on everyday life.

The recent events represent the culmination of a process that has upended all that was meant by “postcolonial.” For me and many others, to be postcolonial was to share a sense of historical kinship with others who had suffered under the lash of colonialism. Chinua Achebe spoke to us, and Kincaid was recognizable to us, because they were witnesses to what our countries, too, had experienced. To be postcolonial also entailed the right to critique our current regimes, because our tainted present wasn’t what we had been promised, and this mandated a fight for greater equality and the rule of law. Yet Hindu ultranationalists no longer talk of British rule as colonial conquest. Instead, for them, it is the arrival of Mughal armies 500 years ago, and the Islamic dynasty they established, that signals the onset of colonialism.

This is a cunning strategy on the part of the BJP and its increasing ranks of faithful followers. By painting the Muslim as the enemy, the Hindu right succeeds in consolidating the Hindu vote across caste and class lines, all unified in opposition to ever more marginalized minorities. Prices, unemployment, and economic inequality are all rising, but we need not address those problems because our leaders have told us that the real danger is 14.2 percent of India’s population.

Am I Indian? Yes, if it means finding the common cause of freedom across religious lines. No, if it means the idolatry of a nation built around a singular religious identity and the cult worship of a single leader.

Amitava Kumar is a professor of English at Vassar College and a Cullman fellow at the New York Public Library. He is the author of, most recently, the novel My Beloved Life .

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