Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers

The first monograph of the series Psychological Issues, gathering three of Erikson's papers with a historical introduction by David Rapaport. The papers are "Ego Development and Historical Change" (1946), in which Erikson first used the term ego identity; "Growth and Crises of the Healthy Personality"; and "The Problem of Ego Identity" (1956), his fullest early account of ego identity, of identity diffusion as the failure of identity formation in late adolescence, and of the psychosocial moratorium. Rapaport's introduction places Erikson's psychosocial theory within the psychoanalytic ego psychology founded by Heinz Hartmann and connects it with Hartmann's concern with adaptation.