ABSTRACT
In these final three chapters, we offer several theoretical and empirical elaborations of Erikson’s life-course perspective on identity formation, based on our attempts to synthesize psychological and sociological approaches to identity into a social psychology of identity relevant to late modernity. In this chapter, we discuss identity formation in the context of resources made available to people in their social settings and acquired by them in their day-to-day interactions, in terms of various ways of psychologically coping with the conditions of late modernity. The next chapter focuses on life-course conditions by examining the normative-ethical requirements necessary if life-long identity formation is to culminate in a sense of integrity at life’s end. We conclude this book by making recommendations regarding how to fully develop and understand the untapped humanistic potential of identity formation.
