Identity Status Shifts
Throughout the lifecycle identity status shifts will occur. When identity status change occurs (in late adolescence and young adulthood) the change is more than twice as likely to be progressive as opposed to regressive. Longitudinally status change is most often a transition form moratorium to identity achievement. Transitions are often inspired by disequilibrium in identity. Marcia outlines how status change occurs as it relates to disequilibrium. Crisis in identity comes in the form of later adult life cycle stages and various life events. Depending on the individual, particular life events such as death of a loved one, job loss, moving, etc. may cause disequilibrium. However, this is only true when an individual has constructed some form of identity. Diffusions are stagnant. They have not made an effort to construct an identity and therefore have no identity to reform. In the case of foreclosures many will choose to live in an environment that is similar to their childhood experiences so that they may remain unchanged. When disequilibrium occurs in the life of foreclosures, the effects may be especially devastating. When disequilibrium occurs a period of re-construction begins. These periods of re-construction are called the moratorium-achievement-moratorium-achievement (MAMA) cycles. In each persons life there are a minimum of three MAMA cycles, corresponding with the three remaining psychosocial stages. During re-construction a person may regress to an earlier identity status. It is crucial that old constructs fall so that new ones that are more encompassing of the person's identity may be constructed. In the re-construction process there is still continuity with the previous identity, however the newer construction is broadened to include new life experiences and commitments.
Read more about this topic: James Marcia
Famous quotes containing the words identity, status and/or shifts:
“Adultery is the vice of equivocation.
It is not marriage but a mockery of it, a merging that mixes love and dread together like jackstraws. There is no understanding of contentment in adultery.... You belong to each other in what together you’ve made of a third identity that almost immediately cancels your own. There is a law in art that proves it. Two colors are proven complimentary only when forming that most desolate of all colors—neutral gray.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Recent studies that have investigated maternal satisfaction have found this to be a better prediction of mother-child interaction than work status alone. More important for the overall quality of interaction with their children than simply whether the mother works or not, these studies suggest, is how satisfied the mother is with her role as worker or homemaker. Satisfied women are consistently more warm, involved, playful, stimulating and effective with their children than unsatisfied women.”
—Alison Clarke-Stewart (20th century)
“God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)