Journal of Alcoholism & Drug Dependence
Open Access

Abstract

I am a Person: Ego Development and Identity Issues with African Americans

Arthur Horton

Present day Americans–especially the middle class–have little concern for social obligation or tradition, and so are less constrained from mingling with unrelated people. Indeed, since they move so frequently to strange neighbourhoods; they need to be able to create new support networks quickly but not to become too attached emotionally to the people in them, since no one knows when anyone will be moving on. Social media and advances in technology have accelerated these processes. Americans we might say are approaching an historical stage with a desire to be self-defining that has produced a disintegrated or alienated consciousness. What defines this consciousness is its antagonism to the external power of society–the wish to be free of imposed social circumstances. The dangers of this position are that: 1) We may devolve into a society in which narcissistic preoccupations are pervasive; 2) Due to competition over more limited resources a social balkanization or fragmentation becomes rampant–divisions along multicultural factors become rallying forces; or 3) We do not grow into a new ethos, and remain condemned to the stagnation of the personality ethics. The above forms of human blindness stem from the same root–an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self when there are shared goals. We must be poised ready for technological, economic, social, and even political change–the one thing we can be sure of in the short-term but more so long-term fate of this country.