| Abstract: | It is widely assumed that people today experience an imperative quest for identity, and that altruism and work have been displaced as credible routes to self-discovery by the abandonment of inhibition and the attainment of intimacy. A preliminary examination of these premises is made through questions included in a survey of adults in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and in questionnaires administered to students at UCLA, two Australian universities, and one British university. Very few adults in Los Angeles, even in the youngest and most highly educated brackets, acknowledge any preoccupation with the question, “Who am I really?,”though most university students in the four samples do. Both adults and students endorse altruism most frequently, impulse-release least frequently, and intimacy with intermediate frequency as routes to self-discovery. They differ most in their evaluation of work as a medium for self-discovery. All observations apply only to a self-conscious search for identity. |
