Psychological identity

One's identity in psychological terms relates to self-image, self-esteem and individuation. It also has to do with whether someone identifies himself or herself as a man or a woman, in the case of transsexualism.

The concept that an individual has a unique identity developed relatively late in history. Factors influencing the emphasis on such psychological identity include:

• Protestant stress on one's responsibility for one's own soul
• Psychology itself, emerging as a distinct field of knowledge and speculation
• The growth of a sense of privacy
• Specialisation of function in early modern times, as opposed to the undifferentiated masses of socially immobile underlings in the feudal pyramid

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.