Dynamics of ego-identity and of concept of future in normative adulthood crises

The author discusses the problem of adulthood periodization and suggests that adult stages of life can be considered as having conditional age boundaries, but being determined by age-specific tasks of development as well. Such tasks exist in culture as the ideal form and are transmitted to its agents by different social institutions in norms, recognized canons, rules, and expectations. Every age has its corresponding ideal form in culture. This ideal form is reflected in the consciousness of a certain developing person as an individual image of future that includes temporal concepts of one's own changes, attitudes, achievements, goals, and other components of the image of the world in future. Subjective characteristics and individual experience bring certain changes in the ideal image of age, but this does not eliminate allage logic of development. The transition between the age stages has a normative-crisis character. The article explores the dynamics of age crisis in the framework of culturalhistorical psychology. The author brings in the concepts of egoidentity and egoidentity status. Egoidentity is considered a dynamic formation that integrates personality transformations and corresponds with such concepts as autonomy of personality, mature personality. It is regarded as a new psychological formation of every normative adulthood crisis. The structure of egoidentity on each age stage is determined by the agespecific tasks, while the status is associated with the phases of developmental crisis.

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