Concept
Identity crisis
The normative crisis of adolescence in Erikson's scheme, the fifth of his eight stages, in which the young person must integrate earlier identifications and new capacities into a workable identity and commit to values and roles; when it fails, the outcome is identity confusion. Erikson first used the term for war veterans who had lost their sense of personal sameness and continuity, and later extended it to the developmental turning point of youth.
- Broader concept
- Psychosocial development
- Introduced by
- Erik Erikson
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Erik Erikson 1950 Erikson coined the term during the Second World War for veterans at the Mount Zion Veterans' Rehabilitation Clinic in San Francisco who had lost their sense of sameness and continuity; he described the crisis as the fifth age in Childhood and Society and recalled the term's origin in the prologue to Identity: Youth and Crisis.