Identity: Youth and Crisis

Chapter 7 draws on Erikson’s writings from 1964. He begins by stating that the nuclear age should involve women at the highest levels of decision-making since, as mothers, they have the future of their children at stake. Erikson believes women in positions of public leadership would add an “ethically restraining” power to politics (261). He says too much of the freedom women have won lies in access to career competition and consumership. Equality has “not led to equivalence, and equal rights have by no means secured equal representation” (262) when one considers that women’s deepest concerns are not expressed in terms of their public influence.

Erikson finds a dilemma in the way that men who try to help define the “uniqueness of womanhood” (262) are criticized, yet many women find it hard to speak about their deepest feelings without sounding defiant or apologetic. The author believes men wish to preserve the differences between the sexes, including male dominance, and that when that dominance is threatened, men cannot be fair.

The author next turns to the “problem” of the identity of female youth. He begins by assuming that young women successfully pass from youth to maturity when they leave the parental family to commit to a mate and their children. Their identity formation differs from that of young men because of their capacity to bear and care for children. He finds this the “core problem” of the crisis assigned to Stage 5, that of fidelity.

Looking at female patients who found themselves conflicted about their womanhood and the “permanent inequality to which it seemed to doom them” (265), he acknowledges that most clinical observation has been done by men. He dismisses the Freudian idea that a girl’s early discovery that she lacks a penis causes trauma, and instead, he posits that through observation of other women, girls discover that they have the ability to bear children.

Erikson describes his participation in a long-term study of boys and girls between 10 and 12 years old conducted at the University of California. The preteens were given the task of constructing an exciting scene from an imaginary movie using toys such as a family, uniformed figures, animals, cars, and blocks. Erikson observed that boys and girls used space differently, the boys emphasizing outer space, and the girls, inner space. For instance, the girls might build the interior of a house and place people and animals within them. Boys constructed houses with elaborate walls, protrusions, and towers and placed people and animals outside them, often utilizing police officers in their scenes.

Erikson offers two simple explanations for the differences in the scenes between boys and girls. They might have represented the presence in the male of an external organ, and in the female, internal ones. They might also have represented a boy’s traditional love of the outdoors, and a girl’s, the indoors. He then offers a more inclusive interpretation, proposing that the way in which the body is constructed—with a penis or a vagina—predisposes the way the young person arranges space. Erikson relates this theory to male tendencies to dominate human space in the realms of height, speed, and collision and female tendencies to center their identities in their childbearing capacity.

Since this interpretation breaks from Freudian tradition, Erikson explains the characteristics of a post-Freudian position on the development of the ego. The complexes and conflicts first attributed to human nature by psychoanalysis are “recognized as existing” but the “wholeness of experience and the opportunities arising with a resolved crisis” (276) can transcend trauma. In other words, the post-Freudian position—Erikson’s own—acknowledges the role of positive outside forces to resolve psychological issues.

Returning to the subject of the importance of the “inner space” in the development of young women, Erikson theorizes that emptiness is the center of both despair and fulfillment for women. A woman abandoned by a man, mourning a child, or experiencing menopause feels empty. He finds it a uniquely male interpretation that women desire a penis. Instead, he suggests that “procreative patterns” are at the root of all inspiration and, if integrated, give power to “all experience and to its communication” (278). The possession of an inner space will always affect women’s development, whether or not they build their life around their ability to have children. Erikson believes this explains why female infants are more likely to survive birth than male ones, why girls can focus on details earlier than boys can, and why women have a longer life expectancy.

The author also believes that women are biologically predisposed to react to the needs of others and show less resistance to control and impulsiveness in adolescence than young men. While he believes men, especially creative ones, have some feminine qualities, women’s qualities exist for the sake of survival of the species.

Adolescent women, like men, experience the “psychosocial moratorium” that delays the onset of adult functioning until they have had a chance to try different experiences. This may include venturing into traditionally male identities. They often ask if they can have an identity before they know “whom they will marry and for whom they will make a home” (282). Erikson believes that a young woman’s identity will always assume there is some man “to be joined and […] children to be brought up” (282). He links much of her identity to her brand of attractiveness and search for a man. At the same time, he acknowledges that young women can take part in many activities that are removed from the future job of childbearing. Still, their moratorium must end in selecting what will be admitted to the inner space “for keeps” (that is, a husband).

Erikson believes that throughout history, women have allowed themselves to be exploited by men: “confined and immobilized, enslaved and infantilized, prostituted and exploited” (284). He believes that anatomy is destiny (a saying popularized by Freud) in determining both physical functions and personality, but he acknowledges that people are more than their bodies. They have individual personalities and are defined by group memberships. Drawing on a statement of Napoleon’s that “history is destiny” (285), he concludes that anatomy, history, and personality combine to determine the individual.

Erikson raises the question whether any one field can provide data on which valid conclusions about the differences between the sexes can be made. Humans exist on multiple levels, which Erikson calls Soma (humans are organisms living a life cycle), Psyche (the realm in which ego is the organizing principle), and Polis (citizenship). In the Soma sphere, women do not only exist as child-bearers but as citizens, workers, and individuals. Within Psyche, women have a unique feminine identity requiring further study. In Polis, women have the capacity for work and leadership, yet their child-bearing abilities will require some adaptations.

Soma, Psyche, and Polis can be integrated for women, but not without some conflict. Women’s ability to procreate does not “doom” them to perpetual motherhood and deny their identity and equality. Women can match men’s competence in most areas. However, their reproductive capacity must be reckoned with in regard to their long-term goals. He concludes that women’s vision and creativity may yet lead to new advances in the sciences—advances that are much-needed, given that the men who have dominated science have led humanity to the brink of extinction.