Human Growth and Development / Unit 12 HGD 1691 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Identity Before Intimacy?
The idea
Erikson placed identity before intimacy. In his view, a young adult must first know who she is before she can fuse her identity with another's without fear of losing herself; in his words, "the condition of twoness is that one must first become oneself." Carol Gilligan, in nineteen eighty-two, called this sequence gender-biased. She argued that women's development centres on relationships and that women share intimately earlier, in friendships, so they might develop identity and intimacy together, or even in reverse order. The critique drew attention to relationships as a path of development rather than a distraction from it. Research has not consistently supported it, though. Longitudinal studies find that identity development predicts later intimacy and partnership quality for both sexes, not only for men, even though women report more intimacy in their relationships.
In practice
Two twenty-two-year-olds, one who has settled her career values before a serious relationship and one who explores who she is through a close partnership, and a longitudinal study following both to thirty.
Where people slip
The misconception is that women develop intimacy before identity, as a rule. Gilligan raised the possibility, and research finds identity predicting intimacy for both sexes, with women reporting more intimacy along the way. What survives from the critique is broader: relationships are a developmental context in their own right, and a theory built mainly on men's lives needs checking against women's. The same pattern appeared with Kohlberg in unit eight: Gilligan's critique was valuable, while the specific sex-difference claim found only modest support. For the exam, know Erikson's sequence, identity before intimacy, and Gilligan's critique of it, and know that the evidence mostly supports Erikson's order for both sexes.
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