Subjectivity, Complexity and the Social World: Erikson's Identity Concept and Contemporary Relational Theories

Erik Erikson's concept of identity, reworked from the perspective of contemporary relational theory, is used to propose an integrative, dialectical view of subjectivity. This view captures dimensions of personal experience and personality organization that have stayed peripheral to most psychoanalytic discourse, from whatever point of view: Personal experience is created and re-created at the threshold of the intrapsychic and the social, such that they are inextricable, and this ubiquitous transaction is itself experienced as the ground and location of how it feels to be a person. Simultaneously, the vitality of personal experience rests on the dynamic synthesis of unity and complexity; this transactional perspective emerges amid the integration of diverse elements of personal experience, such as identity and intimacy, the past and the present, and the world of internal object representations and external relationships. Subjectivity is essentially constructed in the context of relationships; that is, it is intersubjective at its core. This implies extending the very definition of the relational to encompass the broadest view of the social environment, including families, institutions, cultural influences, and even broad historical forces.