Erikson: What is identity?
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008When we talk about virtual worlds and avatars, we immediately discuss concepts like second life, virtual life or virtual identity. By common sense, we understand virtual identity as something not real as our physical environment, but real in some sense that what we do in virtual worlds is real to us. As we’re present in a virtual world, we may use a virtual identity, this is an identity different from the identity of the player behind the avatar. But what is identity at all?
Erik Erikson studied and researched lifestyles, personality developments and identities throughout his scientific carreer. One of his well known books is ‘Identity and life cycle’ where he describes the factors and interdependencies of constituting identity. For Erikson, identity is not something given by birth, and it’s not independent from biological processes of the human body either. It’s not the (physical) body itself, and it’s not the Super-Ego or Ideal-Ego alone. Erikson defines identity as a constant reproduction of images of self, experienced and put together by an individuum.
The process of identity creation begins even before birth as one of the first life experiences of the self is the change from inuteral to exuteral life. The newborn will proceded from one identity phase to another, but only if the previous phase is abgeschlossen (or solved, in Erikson’s language). Identity is therefore a continuous work of the self, a work which Erikson describes as a balancing act between different aspects of the self: Super-Ego, Ideal-Ego, the social structure of the environment and the general picture of reality. Identity is a result of solved identity phases or crisis.
When Erikson talks about identity, he does it from a psychoanalytical perspective. Identity (or better: Ego-identity) is a feeling based on two observations: the observation of a consistency and continuity of the self, and the observation, that others recognize this continuity and consistency too.
Erik H. Erikson: Identity and the Life Cycle. Selected Papers. 1955
