Who Am I?!

This week in psychology we learned about different theories of psychological development throughout life. We took a look at a few different psychologists and studied their ideas on how people develop psychologically. One of the psychologists was Erik Erikson. Erikson's theory involves 8 different psychosocial stages. They are:

1. Trust vs. Mistrust (birth-1)
2. Autonomy vs. Doubt/Shame (1-2/3)
3. Initiative vs. Guilt (3-5/6)
4. Industry vs. Inferiority (5/6-11/12)
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion (adolescence)
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation (early adulthood)
7. Generativity vs. Self-Absorption (middle adulthood)
8. Integrity vs. Despair (later adulthood)

According to Erikson, all of the steps coincide with each other. Success in each step determines their success later in life, whether they can look back on their life and be proud of it or look back on it negatively and realize it's too late for them to do anything about it.

I was mostly interested in the stage identity vs. role confusion, which occurs in adolescence. I was interested in it because that is the stage of life I am currently in and want to see what I need to do to become successful in this stage. This stage of development is all about realizing who you are now and wondering who you'll become in the future. Many people in this stage will continue to experiment with different behaviors until they reach one that they are content with. In this video (warning: mildly inappropriate, I would give it a PG-13), two teens have a conversation about their roles. One teen (the nerdy looking one) seems to seem sure of who he is and what he wants to be as he confronts the other teen (the interesting looking one) about her current identity crisis. This crisis seems to have developed because of the previous stages and outside forces. She seems to be experimenting with different behaviors to find out who she really is as a person. Whether she's going in the right direction or not is up to her because ultimately she has to become content with herself, and I think the nerdy guy should cut her a break a little bit.

I think it's important that this stage exists and at the time it does. I don't think that college could come at a better time for kids. They meet more people and have more freedom to do what they want to do before completely realizing who they are and what they want to do with their life. I can relate because I applied undecided to college. I am hoping to have things sorted out sooner or later to avoid role confusion as that can lead to failure later in life. I do not want to end up a grown adult looking back on my life and being unhappy. Okay, now I think I'm over-thinking this a bit...