Identity has been a topical issue in both popular and social science litera-
tures for the past 40 years. Its usage is widespread, its meanings, varied.
As Erikson ( 1968) ¹ noted: "'Identity' and 'identity crisis' have . . . be-
come terms which alternately circumscribe something so large and so
seemingly self-evident that to demand a definition would almost seem
petty, while at other times they designate something made so narrow for
purposes of measurement that the over-all meaning is lost . . ." (p. 15).
Identity has been a central focus of Erikson's writings, and it is this the-
oretician's work that serves as the foundation of this volume.

Erikson's notion of identity, although grounded in classic psychoana-
lytic psychology, has stretched beyond the bounds of biological drives
and conscious and unconscious sources of motivation to address, as well,
the role of society in patterning development over the course of the life
span. "The traditional psychoanalytic method . . . cannot quite grasp iden-
tity because it has not developed terms to conceptualize the environment"
( Erikson, 1968, p. 24). ² Erikson's attention to the social milieu has cer-
tainly been a major contribution that has enabled a more comprehensive
understanding of identity and its developmental process. Although iden-
tity's contours are shaped and reshaped throughout the life span, it is
during adolescence that identity issues generally become a central focus
of concern.

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