I must register a certain impatience with the faddish equation, never suggested by me, of the term identity with the question, “Who am I?” This question nobody would ask himself except in a more or less transient morbid state, in a creative self-confrontation, or in an adolescent state sometimes combining both; wherefore on occasion I find myself asking a student who claims that he is in an “identity crisis” whether he is complaining or boasting. The pertinent question, if it can be put into the first person at all, would be, “What do I want to make of myself, and what do I have to work with?”
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