More than any other time in human history, we are obsessed with personal identity. This isn’t to suggest that people in earlier times were ignorant or indifferent to it. Research into human psychological development strongly suggests that identity formation is universal.
We all go through it. Quite a few of us, however, don’t get through it – that is to say, for whatever reason, we get stuck on the way.
Our current Age of Identity and its thematic obsessions has its epicenter in the generation of late Millennials (Gen Y) and Gen Z, born between 1990 and 2010. A larger percentage of this generational cohort seem to struggle more deeply and dramatically with questions of who they are. For any number of reasons, many of them seem caught in a squeezing spiral of neurotic energy, a kind of whirlpool threatening to pull them down into the Abyss.
While this generation exemplifies the suffering of identity confusion, it also serves as a case study for helping us better understand the dynamics in play for all of us on the way to becoming somebody special.
My diagram situates identity within a system of dimensions and developmental achievements that provide context for our exploration. In the middle of everything sits the separate center of self-conscious personal identity – the ego, although it’s not labeled.
The “I” (Latin ego) is the actor who, looking outward to our social situation, inhabits and performs the various Roles that identify us to others and give us a place on the interpersonal performance Stage. When it goes well, we enjoy a sense of belonging to something that matters.
The actor-ego can also look inward, where our Soul rests in quiet solitude with the body. Unlike the immortal prisoner-soul of some religions, here it simply refers to the animate consciousness which imbues the body’s physical structure with present awareness. This deep communion of body and soul invites ego to release from its effortful management of identity and relax into being, surrendering to the Ground or grounding mystery of existence.
When development goes reasonably well, identity can thus look both outward and inward: outward through Role to the Stage in its quest for belonging; inward through Soul to the Ground in its quest for communion.
For quite a few of us, however, development doesn’t go so well. Again, for whatever reason, these individuals are stuck in a closing spiral and unable to either connect outwardly for a sense of social belonging, or release inwardly for a sense of spiritual communion. Identity for them is a trap they can’t seem to escape, rather than a means or vehicle for the higher (belonging) and deeper (communion) experiences that all centered persons seek.
As captives of identity, dissociated from others on the social Stage and estranged from their own inner Ground, existence becomes an exercise in defining themselves, perhaps medically or surgically redefining themselves, until they can feel centered in who they are. Identity is deconstructed and reengineered in pursuit of the self-recognition they need.
Their obsession over identity spins them around a center that is not a true center but a drain pulling them deeper into anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, and finally depression.
Along the vertical axis of my diagram are arranged the critical achievements in healthy identity formation. At the midpoint of this vertical axis is identity itself, where the personality eventually achieves ego strength – the position of stability from whence the individual can engage outwardly and release inwardly.
The full set of developmental achievements should be read “organically,” as charting the growth of a healthy human personality from deep in the Ground to its place out on the Stage.
When we are infants and young children, the pressing need of our animal nature is to feel safe. As our taller powers provide us with protection, warmth, and nourishment, our nervous system is calibrated to a state of calm and open assurance. By their mediation, we come to know Reality as provident and responsive to our needs.
This internal state of composure and existential faith is called security, and it serves as the foundation for everything to come.
A calm and composed nervous system will provide a clear path later on, when ego is ready to make its descent into communion. The inner self of the Soul is one with the body, whose calm composure offers a kind of latticework of rhythms that cradle awareness through its release from self-conscious reverie in identity and deeper into the grounding mystery of being.
Security is this deep anchor and clear channel of present awareness.
Because our inner security is fostered in close bonds with our caregivers, it very naturally evolves into spontaneous responses of empathy, trust, affection and sympathy, together known as intimacy. The “feeling-with” of sympathy, the Greek equivalent of our Latin compassion, is a social sensitivity with roots in empathy, referring to our capacity for understanding the needs, feelings, and expressions of others from the reference of our own human experience (literally feeling-in).
We spontaneously reach out to help or comfort another because we know what it feels like to be in pain or lost, to lose something or someone we loved, or to feel alone and confused.
Security and intimacy are together the experiential foundation of identity. A centered sense of self can only find its center to begin with as we feel securely grounded within ourselves and intimately connected to another.
With ego strength and a centered identity, we can confidently move onto the Stage for the orientation we need to play our part. Whereas the Ground within is intrinsic to our essential nature as human beings, the Stage beyond is a key feature of a larger performance theater known as our world – the social construct of values, stories, traditions, institutions, and beliefs that serves as our context of meaning.
Those of us who are stuck and struggling to find ourselves are not helped through legislation that identifies and protects the rights of individuals caught in the sticky web of “intersectionality.” At the end of that path is only more confusion, isolation, and loneliness.
We need to work together in creating community where all of us can feel safe, loved, capable and worthy. Where everyone has a place and a valuable contribution to make.
Tracts of Revolution 