There are times when we don’t recognize ourselves. Others in which those who live next to us seem strangers to us. Who is that person with whom we have shared years and whom we suddenly perceive as an unknown being? We do not understand his words and his behavior displaces us.
There are many doubts and uncertainties regarding identity. That of men, of peoples. We are ‘One, none, one hundred thousand’, as Luigi Pirandello wrote, convinced that what we define ‘identity’ it is just a mask that, more or less consciously, each individual chooses to wear. We can have many roles and many faces. We are mothers, fathers, children, brothers, friends, workers.
As soon as we try to focus on the elements of our identity or that of another person, everything seems to elude us. A run-up that becomes more complicated today, because society is ever more fluid and constantly changing.
But why is identity so important? “Because it is a constitutive trait of our personality that allows us to define ourselves, to present ourselves to the world and to make ourselves recognizable. It is the interface between the sphere of subjectivity and that of objectivity, between us and society. It delimits us and allows us to enter into a relationship with others “, explains Anna Oliverio Ferraris, psychologist, psychotherapist and author of the book The construction of identity.
Professor Oliverio Ferraris, in the past the roles were more defined in society. Was it easier to find your identity?
“In traditional society, roles were defined at birth. Those who were born noble as such would remain for life. Those who were born peasant had little opportunity to devote themselves to anything other than working in the fields. Men, women, children and the elderly had duties, rights and different roles. Identity was a stable trait not subject to discussion. With modernity, individual identity began to free itself from that of the clan, family, caste. The belief spread that the individual could actively contribute to self-construction. This new freedom of contemporary man also entails a new responsibility towards oneself and, in a fluid world like ours, also the need, at times, to review and remodel aspects of one’s identity that make it difficult to adapt to changes “.
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You write that we have become ‘social chameleons’. Do we need to quickly adapt to different environments and groups?
“The complexity of our world, the fact that we find ourselves moving in different social contexts leads us to immerse ourselves in various roles. But if taking on different roles in certain situations can indicate adaptability and plasticity, it can indicate the ability to resonate. with the context in which we live, however, we must try, in order not to get lost, to always maintain our own internal coherence “.
How is our first identity formed in childhood? How does it relate to the relationship with the parents?
“Identity in childhood gradually emerges in relation to the physical and mental development and to the relationship that the child has with his or her reference figures. Family identity is very important for children, who are still unable to position themselves as autonomous individuals. in the broader social context. To qualify as “children of …”, “brothers of …” represents a certainty for them “.
The malaise of adolescents is often linked to the search for an identity that they struggle to identify. How to help them?
“Adolescence is the age in which the psychological work on identity is particularly evident: we try to understand who we are in relation to others, how others see us and evaluate us, who we want to be and become. it is a good relationship, the adult can help the adolescent to clarify himself and his aspirations, but also to modulate his own behavior and expectations on those of others, in order to create bonds of solidarity on which he can to count, in the awareness that isolation is almost always a condition of social fragility “.
When we talk about young people we also think about gender identity. Why is it that sexuality and sexual identity are also more fluid in boys today?
“Because there is greater sexual freedom than in the past and it is understood that sexuality can be experienced in different ways, without perceiving oneself as deviant and vicious or judged as such. Also sexual identity, like other aspects of identity, is structured in the course of development, reaching a clearer and more definitive aspect in adolescence “.
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What does the group provide for identity?
“Within a cohesive group, energies and emotions circulate that have the effect of binding individuals in a relationship of mutual loyalty. A boy can consider the group of peers or the gang as his real family and respect rites, rules, words of order, clothing in that it not only finds a protective envelope in it, but also a social place and an individual identity “.
In the conflict in Ukraine we see how important the concept of identity of a group, of a people is.
“Wars lead to a polarization of conflicts so that the people who are involved in them are induced to take a position, sometimes in a coherent and reasoned way, sometimes under the emotional pressure without having a clear awareness of it. A very strong glue among soldiers. engaged in fighting is the team spirit that is formed among the comrades of one’s section with whom one shares the spaces, the language, the risks, the rules and the fears. A fusion is created between the comrades of the same group that provides support psychological and physical to the individuals that compose it “.
Can excess identity crush the other? As in the case of dictators …
“This is the case of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and is not interested in others except for his own personal advantage, to obtain approval and admiration, to” win “over others at all costs. ‘him at the center, others have only to admire and support him. Precisely because his self-esteem completely depends on the consent and approval of others, the narcissist has a fragile personality that can however become annoying and dangerous when it happens that he is in a position of power”.
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