Identity: Indian Style
V. Veeraraghavan
IDENTITY AND ADULTHOOD by Sudhir Kakar Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1980, 132 pp., 35.00
Nov-Dec 1980, volume 5, No 11/12

‘Identity and Adulthood’ is the pro­duct of a month-long seminar organized by the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research in the year 1978, when experts such as Erik Erikson, basically a psycho-analyst was called upon to lead the dis­cussion. Sudhir Kakar as the editor has attempted to bring together in this volume the views of experts from different fields on the growing up process in the Indian context. While Professor Erikson’s concept of Identity provided the base for discus­sions, Sudhir Kakar argues that identity can be discussed only in the context of personal growth and communal change. Further, he opines that identity crisis in individual development cannot be separ­ated from the contemporary crisis in the historical development of his group. Identity crisis is now accepted as an in­dicator of a turning point, when develop­ment either takes a progressive or regres­sive direction.

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