What is Identity?

Photo by Rui Silvestre on Unsplash

Identity is an important part of my brand but it’s also becoming an increasingly less important part of how I see myself in the world. That said, the significance of identity is inherent. I wrote my final master’s papers on identity. Identity captivates me as a topic of psychology because until recently it’s one that has felt close to me. From an analytic perspective, and with inspiration from what I write about in my book, “Get Your Mind Right”, available now, I would say, that the reason I have been inspired by identity as a topic of research up to this point in my life, is that I have struggled with my own identity. It’s not far out to say that part of my identity has been figuring out my identity. But I’m starting to move past that now and I want to explore the importance of this experience.

Two important identity theories nestled in developmental psychology are Erick Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development, and James Marica’s Identity quadrants. The first thing to note is that developmental psychology and specifically identity formation within developmental psychology, happens within and around the years of a person turning 18. So developmentally, before a person’s prefrontal cortex or source of executive functions is fully developed, that person should have a relatively good grasp on who they are as a person.

In one of the final papers I wrote during my master’s program, I highlighted a study that indicated that men of African descent generally and specifically, don’t resonate with having a developed identity until well into their mid-life. While I can’t claim how widespread this phenomenon is, it’s probable that the statistics vary based on culture. In college I felt as though I had a difficult time coming into my identity, at a period of time where I should’ve had a better understanding of who I was.

Development can be fluid and happens throughout all stages of a person’s life, however, there are benchmarks or checkpoints that one should meet. In hindsight I can say that I knew who I was but for one reason or another, I wasn’t or didn’t feel comfortable or empowered to live in a way that reflected how I felt on the inside. Identity is self-awareness or sense of self. The facts of who you are, are allowed to flourish. Post-modernism or something similar may refer to it as your truth.

I’m not sure how to approach this next part… My identity crisis, a term that I use relatively loosely, has revolved around my sexuality, romantic and similar relationships, associations, relationship with family, career, lifestyle, relationship with self, place in society, and existentialism. It started out as flirting with ideas of who I am based on instinct and inclination; things were going decently at this stage, In my opinion. From there it turned into being reverent but also insecure about my family and how I was living growing up under someone else’s care. Then my identity turned into spiritual wrestling with God and not in a good way. Then a lot of time was put into combating perpetuated narratives that I felt were wrong, but I didn’t have the voice, confidence, or evidence I felt as though I needed at the time, to push back effectively. From there and in the midst of all of that, career and livelihood became more prevalent.

There was a time when I wanted to be everything, which really meant I didn’t know what I wanted to be; but I'm not going to play young Kenneth like that. Eventually and relatively early on, I settled on wanting to be a psychologist because it was in that field and with the practitioners in that field that I encountered, where I felt somewhat understood and I wanted to perpetuate that feeling. I struggled to get my master’s, as of the writing of this article I hope to enroll in a Ph.D. program, and my career path has basically been fraught ever since I left school.

Career and livelihood have taken up a lion’s share of my understanding of self because it’s been the one area I've been consistently misunderstood in and have had to fight a lot of people, places, and things over. There was a time where I would claim during and after college that I wanted to be rich and famous, and people would tell me how that would not happen or they would straight up laugh at me or try to convince me, to give up on that goal.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

I’ve written about my gripes with corporate America and my inability so far, for one reason or another, to climb any corporate ladder. And in the field of psychology itself, three critical moments changed my trajectory in that space. In college I did an internship with a school psychologist at a primary school and high school. It was interesting but it was boring, I couldn't see much of a life for myself there. Then, also in college, I changed my master’s major, disqualifying me from hitting certain benchmarks (there’s that word again) that would have allowed me to get my license at that stage of life, which would have ensured that I had a decent to good job for the rest of my life.

Now I'm an author, publisher, entrepreneur, thought leader, content creator, and budding public figure. I’ve also had the opportunity to work for some solid companies along the way. That arc isn’t too bad when it’s written out like this. Hopefully from my personal example a takeaway you can get is that who you are is important to how you operate in this world. But I am learning, that may be true up to a certain point. My metamorphosis on this topic is coming from a place where I don’t want to qualify myself to be myself.

An implication for why identity formation is thought to happen during adolescence, is that it is supposed to calcify to some degree. Who you are should at some point, be malleable while also retaining some form. A healthy and self-actualized individual shouldn’t experience instability in their self-perception. And I think part of what that looks like is operating within the context of your identity, while at the same time not making identity a central platform in your life.

From a politics perspective and within the context of America’s recent election, while there are people still mourning the results on November 5th, one of the takeaways for people willing to learn from the results is that identity isn’t everything. This is an important point because the democratic party specifically, amplified identity politics for the last 16 years circa Barack Obama’s first campaign. Identity has a shelf-life relative to importance. At some point you should know who you are and that should be enough. To that point I think that’s something VP Kamala Harris did well during her 2024 presidential campaign. Other people wanted her to lean into her identity as an Indian-black American woman more than she demonstrated she felt was necessary. That’s progressivism.

This position can be corroborated via the two theories mentioned earlier. The psychosocial stages of development focus on personality development. Erick Erickson believed that personality develops in stages and over the course of your life. Identity versus role confusion is the fifth stage out of eight stages and takes place between the ages of 12-18. In this stage people are experimental. They take time to discover their sense of self and what makes them tick. If young people are not allowed to partake in this discovery and experimentation, then they can experience role confusion; a sense of insecurity and being unsure. Like with some theories about self-actualization, it’s in the doing that you become. You must be allowed and or allow yourself to explore what you like until you find something that will stick. If nothing sticks and or depending on what sticks, you can get stuck in this stage and or perpetuate maladaptive or negative behaviors that can have a downstream effect on the rest of your life.

James Marcia Identity Quadrants

James Marica is a clinical and developmental psychologist who among other things, created a framework for understanding identity formation in adolescence. The identity quadrants highlight four concepts of identity that an individual may fall into and can move around in: identity foreclosure, achievement, diffusion and moratorium. On each axis you have a scale of low to high, with commitment being on the Y axis and exploration being on the X axis. Identity foreclosure is a combination of high commitment and low exploration and suggests that a person has committed to an understanding of self without much if any exposure to something new or unfamiliar.

Identity achievement is the byproduct of a high level of commitment or dedication and exploration and exposure. This quadrant reflects a confident self-awareness where the individual has chosen a path that they want to stay on. Identity diffusion is low commitment and low exploration. This person is disillusioned with their sense of self and is relatively uninterested in changing that. Finally, Identity moratorium is a person who exhibits low commitment and high exploration within their identity. These individuals don’t necessarily feel compelled to stay on any particular course of life.

Identity is an insidious aspect of human existence. It expresses itself through you in whatever you do. The sooner you get a grip on what that looks like for you the sooner you can advance to other things. The purpose of identity formation is to enable you to interact with the world. As you mature the developmental theory is that you are maturing out of this kind of conversation or mental exercise. Your sense of self is different from your self-concept in that you can settle into who you are without tapping into the scope of your potential. You don’t need an understanding of your identity to experience self-actualization or vice versa but, resonating with an identity that you are willing to highly commit to can help you become self-actualized.

Identity is an immutable characteristic and it’s what you choose to commit to. You can have a high level of commitment to something and be malleable on the margins. The mind is placid, meaning it can always change, so you don’t have to use your sense of self as an excuse for your quality of life. Identity and self-actualization are cousins in that they are both proactive experiences. As you do things the things you do become tacky and salient. The point is if you can help it, don’t drag out the identity part of your life journey. Find something about yourself that resonates with the world and stick with it. Be willing to grow and change but that doesn't mean being unstable or unwilling to commit to anything, because you are concerned that you may have to change for one reason or another down the line.

You can fear change in two ways. You can be afraid of change from the perspective of the nouns in your life becoming different. Or you can be afraid of change from the perspective of you becoming different. I am not saying this is an easy balancing act but for growth and maturity to take place you must decide that you are who you are and you are okay with that and or hopefully like it, you are open to change, but maybe you're not inclined towards it. Consistency is an ethereal quality. Your higher self needs to be consistent. If you are 18 or older, my advice to you would be to form your identity (make a choice) already and move on. Get past this checkpoint to experience the rest of what life may have to offer you.