ABSTRACT
I once overheard a well-liked teacher in a quiet moment of reflection comment to a distraught soul in a 16-year-old’s form that there is no map when it comes to matters of maturing; even Frost’s road less traveled, described in his well-known poem by that name, is more defined in form than the course this teenager must plot. While there are undoubtedly no detailed relief maps laying out the finer contours of our individual identity pathways, there do appear to be some major general thoroughfares in the identity formation process that, when recognized, might have given both the adolescent wayfarer and sympathetic bystander above some assurance of a teenage future that would once again cohere, albeit in a new way. Plottings of general normative routes provided by Erikson, Blos, Kohlberg, Loevinger and Kegan not only allow us to glimpse the next developmental roadside resting point (identity stage) but also provide guides as to the most useful means of unblocking developmental arrest as well as assisting the already engaged traveler on his or her own life journey.
