The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity

by Kwame Anthony Appiah

In Mind, Self, and Society, published in 1934, George Herbert Mead outlined an influential theory of the self as the product of an “I” responding to the social demands of others, which, once internalized, formed what he called the “me.”

Talk of identity really takes off in developmental psychology after the Second World War, with the influential work of the psychologist Erik Erikson.

the importance of social roles and group memberships in shaping one’s sense of self, which

“ego identity.”

crises of identity in the lives of Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi, and published books with titles like Identity and the Life Cycle (1959), Identity: Youth and Crisis (...