Identity

Identity is who you are, what you do, how you see yourself and how others see you and who and how you conduct yourself in the world. 

Identity is also about what and who you are not and how you maintain yourself in the world and in relationship to others so that you are not seen or experienced by others in a way that you don’t identify with, that is not ‘you’. Most people appear to have a clearer idea about who and what they are not, as opposed to who they are and what they are. Most of us can say that a particular way of living or doing or being is “not me”, “I am not that kind of person”, “I would never be or behave that way”, “It would never cross my mind to think this or that”. 

Identity is a temporal and spatial idea largely enshrined in developmental psychology. 

Four key lines of IDENTITY are

Productive Identity

• This refers to that part of your identity (ie who and what you are and do, on a day to day basis) that comes from your capacity to earn or learn; work or study 
• This is extremely important in the growing up process, especially in Western culture, as this is over of the key ways a young person marks themselves out from their family; marks or the fact that they are different from their family and the world they were raised in 
• Through your ‘productive identity’, through study or work, we develop a clearer idea about who we are, what we do, and where we stand in relation to other people; it enables us to position ourselves in the multi-differentiated and somewhat stratified society we live in 
• Through your ‘productive identity’, through study or work, earning or learning, we develop a clearer idea about who we are not, what we are not, how we will not be in this world; and perhaps the reasons why this is so 
• ‘Productive identity’ in Western culture is largely shaped by your abilities and strengths and an avoidance of your weaknesses; we tend to study or work in our areas of psychometric strength (numbers or language, memory and space) 
• ‘Productive identity’ is a key shaper of peer relationships as we tend to form close relationships with people we are or feel similar to; at work or in education, especially post-secondary education 

Attachment Identity

• This refers to that part of your identity that is formed in and around the world of people who claim you as one of theirs; that you belong to them
• Belonging
• Family

Peer Identity

• Relationships of similarity
• Common activities such as work or sport or education

Sexual Identity

• Love
• Closeness
• Sex
• Sexuality
• Intimacy
• Connectedness
• Exclusion
• Bodies