Concept
Identity diffusion
The lack of an integrated, stable sense of oneself and of the important people in one's life. Erik Erikson used the term for a failure of identity formation at the crisis of adolescence; Otto Kernberg made it a lasting structural sign of borderline personality organization, in which contradictory images of self and others stay split apart instead of being joined into a whole.
Read more- Introduced by
- Erik Erikson
- Key works
- 4
reworked by
- Otto F. Kernberg 1967 Kernberg took Erikson's notion of identity diffusion, which Erikson tied to the identity crisis of adolescence, and made it a defining structural feature of borderline organization, extending it from the concept of oneself to the concept of one's significant others.
gave rise to
- Borderline personality organization Kernberg built borderline personality organization on Erikson's identity diffusion, which he made the first of its three defining structural features.
introduced by
- Erik Erikson Erikson described identity diffusion as the failure of identity formation in late adolescence, chiefly in "The Problem of Ego Identity" (1956), reprinted in Identity and the Life Cycle; he later preferred the term identity confusion.