Summarise Two Different Approaches To Identity. Ho

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Summarise two different approaches to identity. How has each been used to further our understanding of this concept? ‘...knowing who we are requires knowing who we are not...identity represents the balance between self and other. Identity therefore has both individual and social elements.’ (as cited in Phoenix, 2007, p52)√ It has been said that identity can be understood as one’s own notion of oneself shaped from many sources. In this essay two different attitudes will be examined to further our understanding of identity. Psychosocial theory Erik Erikson was a German psychoanalyst who devised his psychosocial theory from clinical and naturalistic observation and the analysing of biographies of famous men.√ Erikson viewed identity as psychosocial, meaning that the environment (community) in which young people mature helps to shape their identities. This coupled with the attributes and characteristics genetically inherited from parents give us our core identity.√ The core identity gives the sense of continuity with the past and direction for the future. Erikson believed that is important for individuals to feel that their social group views them as constant over time. Having lived through two world wars, Erikson believed that identity crisis was important to the period in which he lived. He also saw that the achievement of identity was a lifelong process involving progressive conflict resolutions between firstly, individual needs and social demands and secondly, positive and negative developmental possibilities. These conflicts were considered to be common to most individuals and were therefore typical rather than abnormal. Erikson termed this ’normative crisis’.√ Conflicts between individual needs and social demands and between positive and negative developmental possibilities were deemed to be normal rather than uncharacteristic

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