ABSTRACT
Identity has become a widely used reference and household term. Identity and reality are intrinsically and completely interdependent, if by reality it is both internal and external reality. Ego-identity emphasises the individual ego finding and functioning in a social role offered by the social environment. Self-identity, on the other hand, stresses one’s experience in this role. Identity, as the incarnation of an individual’s ego/self in a given social role, is the bridge that spans inner and outer reality. The generational gap represents an area in which change and evolution may have come dangerously close to erosion. This chapter presents Being and Doing as two underlying modalities of experience, focused on the experience of self and other. The fact that social reality is increasingly characterised by change and flux poses new challenges for identity formation. The adolescent requires an optimum of constancy and a modicum of social conservatism in his social environment.
