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We bring together in this issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly three papers on the concept of identity and its status in psychoanalysis: Robert Paul takes a fresh look at Erikson’s use of identity as a bridging concept that links individual development to the larger society; Alessandra Lemma conceptualizes the intertwining of psychic and social reality in the formation of gender identity; and Michael Rustin questions the value of the concept’s social dimension and argues that analysts should think about identifications rather than identity in their theorizing and clinical work. A fourth paper on the identity concept, by Francisco Gonzalez, will appear in the next issue of the Quarterly.
The prevalence of the term identity has waxed and waned in the analytic literature. Freud rarely used the term. It first became a focus of American psychoanalysis as analysts, guided by such observers and theorizers of early life as Greenacre (1958) and Mahler (1958), turned their attention increasingly toward preoedipal development. Identity became a central theme in analysis through the work of Erikson, who used the term to capture the psychosocial nature of development, the bringing together for each individual of the dual strands of psychosexual identity, and the roles offered to that individual by the wider society. More recently, as identity has become a central theme of contemporary sociopolitical discourse, the relation between this discourse and psychoanalysis as well as the place of the social in analytic thinking have become highly important to analysts once again.
As Rustin tells us, the Shorter OED gives two definitions for the term identity:
The quality or condition of being the same: absolute or essential sameness; oneness.
Individuality, personality; individual existence. [Rustin, p.1]