Q.Explain, with reference to Erikson, why establishing an identity is considered the primary developmental task of adolescence, and what happens when an adolescent fails to resolve this task.

Erikson held that adolescence's central task is forming an identity separate from one's parents; failure to resolve this task results in what he called identity confusion. …

According to Erik Erikson, each stage of the life-span presents the individual with a particular psychosocial task or challenge to resolve, and the chapter identifies establishing an identity as the primary such task of adolescence.

Identity, as defined in the chapter, is who a person is, and what their values, commitments and beliefs are. Adolescence is considered the stage at which this task becomes central because it is the period during which an individual, for the first time, has both the cognitive capacity (through the newly developed formal operational, abstract thinking of this stage) and the social opportunity to genuinely work out a personalised set of beliefs that are uniquely their own, separate from those simply inherited from their parents. This is achieved through a gradual process of detachment from parents, during which the adolescent begins forming their own views on questions such as 'Who am I? Which subjects should I study? Do I believe in God?' — questions that, taken together, constitute the broader search for identity.

Erikson's account also makes clear that this process is not always smooth. In the course of achieving an identity, an adolescent could experience real conflict — both with their parents, who may not agree with the adolescent's emerging views and choices, and within themselves, as they weigh different possible identities, beliefs and life paths against one another. Adolescents who are able to cope successfully with these conflicting pulls emerge with a coherent, integrated new sense of self.

When an adolescent is not able to cope with this identity-forming process, however, Erikson describes the result as identity confusion. According to the chapter, this identity confusion can lead an adolescent down one of two problematic paths: some individuals respond by isolating themselves from their peers and family altogether, withdrawing rather than working through the conflict; others respond in the opposite way, by losing their own individual identity in the crowd — that is, submerging their sense of self entirely into a group identity rather than developing a genuinely personal one. …