The importance of societal response to the identity formation process
has been highlighted for me recently through an undergraduate course
that I teach on adolescent and adult development. I began the first class
session by asking students, anonymously, to write down how they would
know or when it was they knew they had their own adult identity. As
I read through responses later, I was struck by how frequently the input
from significant others or societal institutions played a key role in the
process of their self-definitions. Among more memorable descriptions
were the following: "I knew I had my own adult identity when I went
home from university over the first vacation and my mother made me
cups of tea and treated me like a visitor.""I know I will have my own
adult identity when I become responsible, that is, when I finish universi-
ty, get a job, get married, or turn 40--whichever comes first!""I knew
I had my own adult identity when I realized my parents just did not know
what was best for me anymore."

As the literature on adolescent development has burgeoned over the
past 30 years, so have efforts to understand, more systematically, the
adolescent identity formation process. Erikson's original writings have
served as the impetus for the vast majority of these works. One of the
most popular research traditions to spring from Erikson's clinical obser-
vations has been the ego identity status paradigm developed by Marcia
( 1966). ³ This approach has expanded the bipolar concept of identity set
forth by Erikson to describe four distinct styles by which individuals deal
with identity-defining issues. Marcia's paradigm and other research ap-
proaches to the question of identity are described in some detail in chap-
ter 1 of this volume.

The present volume reflects the research efforts over at least the past
10 years of nine social scientists who, in various ways, have contributed
further to the work that Erikson and Marcia began. The impetus for this
book began 3½ years ago in a small restaurant in the lake district of Fin-
land, where a group of identity researchers had gathered for dinner dur-
ing the Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Study
of Behavioral Development. There, enthusiasm ran high for the possibil-
ity of a week of discussions "downunder" in New Zealand. Plans con-
tinued to develop over the next 2 years at "Garfield's Valley House Cafe"
summit in the Minnesota countryside, the docks on the Seattle waterfront,
and at fax machines and computer terminals around the world that gave
access to various electronic mail networks.

Ultimately in February 1992, Sally Archer, Michael Berzonsky, Harold
Grotevant, Stephen Haslett, Jane Kroger, Hugh Lauder, James Marcia, Jean

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