The psychologist Erik Erikson has explained how that process of identity formation works during youth, when a person tries on a series of roles and experiments with different kinds of relationships.1 Daughter, good athlete, average student, girlfriend, actress, sister, babysitter, pal, shy person, closet moralist, dreamer—out of this potpourri of identities some coherent sense of self must be formed. This is the developmental business of youth, says Erikson. He called it the task of this phase of life.
