Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Derived from the Latin root idem, implying sameness and continuity, the term has a long philosophical history which examines permanence amid change and unity amid diversity, but in the modern period it is closely linked to the rise of Individualism, and its analysis is considered to start with the writings of John Locke and David Hume. It is not till the twentieth century, however, that the term comes into popular usage; reinforced especially since the 1950s in North America with the publication of books like The Lonely Crowd (Riesman et al., 1950) and Identity and Anxiety (Stein et al., 1960). These, along with much literature and drama, documented the increasing loss of meaning in Mass society and the subsequent search for identity; and during this period the term became widely used in descriptions of the quest to establish ‘who one really is’. Initially dealing with the crises faced by blacks, Jews and religious minorities, it was ultimately generalized to the whole of modern society. By the 1970s, Robert Coles could claim that the term was ‘the purest of clichés’ (Gleason, 1983, p. 913).In the social sciences, discussions of identity take two major forms, psychodynamic and sociological. The psychodynamic tradition emerges with Sigmund Freud's theory of identification, through which the child comes to assimilate (or introject) external persons or objects (usually the superego ... log in or subscribe to read full text