On Discovering One's Identity—A Case Report

The prolonged analysis of a very ill patient provided an opportunity to reconstruct in some detail early experiences pertaining to the discovery of one's own ego, or rather of those segments of the ego that embody the sense of one's identity. The term identity is used to denote the awareness of one's self as an entity separate and distinct from one's environment, specifically, earliest environment. The intention of this presentation is the demonstration of factors that stimulated an accelerated and precocious development of the sense of identity, and to trace how the forced discovery, having proved an experience of traumatic significance, led to a faulty ego development of an unusual nature, and to certain pathological consequences for the total personality of the patient.

Whether or not this contribution to ego pathography adds in some measure to our understanding of normal ego development is not to be determined on the basis of the study of only one case, though some related questions appear to merit further inquiry. The material may be considered in the light of the old problem of the relationship between ego development controlled by inherited factors, and that stimulated by the variable aspects of necessity, but generalizations should be deferred until additional information has been collected, including particularly that to be gained from the analytic study of children.

Since the observations contained little fundamentally new or unexpected findings, no review of the pertinent literature was attempted. The study is presented because of the relative scarcity of published clinical material of this nature, though theoretical considerations are numerous. The material was obtained in the course of an analysis of several years' duration, though it is mainly concerned with problems and phenomena which dominated a stage of the treatment lasting somewhat longer than