The Epigenesis of Identity—What Does It Mean?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Erikson borrowed the concept of epigenesis from embryology to propose that optimal personality development involves a sequencing of life tasks that emerges according to a predetermined principle of readiness by the individual; one’s growing biological capacities, psychological desires, as well as social demands lead one into a broadening array of interactions with people and social institutions through the life span. Erikson assumed that the conflicts of each life stage are systematically related to those of all other life stages, with a special time of ascendancy in the life course for each, and that toward the end of each stage, a more or less lasting resolution to the conflict is found that will impact resolutions to all subsequent life stages. However, Erikson did not detail exactly how this process occurs. Case studies are presented to illustrate how identity and ongoing psychosocial stages of adult development appear to co-develop, and suggestions for future studies of the epigenesis of identity are proposed.