Discussion

I am particularly pleased at having the opportunity of discussing this paper because of my special interest in the meanings and implications of “identity crisis.” It is my conviction, along with Dr. Rubins, that “identity crisis” is not limited to the period of adolescence but that it is an ongoing process, in which we are involved as we go on in the process of living. At each moment we must be affirming our unique identity as a participating being in a changing social structure in time and space.

This affirming of our identity has two aspects: the healthy process of growing and expanding in which we make comparisons among different experiences so as to find similarities and dissimilarities among them, make generalizations about them, represent these generalizations by abstractions, and finally represent these abstractions by symbols. Without this skill, i.e., the human capacity to use symbols, we could not deal with abstract concepts. Nor could we retain the images of past experiences to project them into the future, to anticipate, to plan, to connect the near and far in time and space into the continuum of our life. Without the ability to symbolize we could not be humanly creative. Or put another way, in growing we discover something new and add it to our identity, our self-concept, our knowing this is the I, I am.

Along with this healthy process of identity affirming, we have the unhealthy process of identity affirming, I quote Dr. Rubins, “with its idealization of some attributes of self and rejective denegration of others.” As a direct result of neurotic anxiety we create an image that will be acceptable to what we have experienced as an environment hostile to the natural self. And so we create an internal dictatorship of unconscious processes which accounts for that which is rigid, insatiable, stereotyped and unlearning in human experience. They produce patterns of compulsive repetition in the ways we eat, drink, walk, dress, fight, play, love or create. They li