- stage: Individuation (12 - 20 years)
- prevalence: Theoretically unlikely
- preliminal: Tolerance
- liminal: Self-identity/Role confusion
- postliminal: Independence
- crisis: Alienation
- The Structure corresponding to the Individuation stage.
- Development of ideology
- Associated with a ghost, skeleton. The skeleton of the Big Other.
- That which is unseen big lingers.
- Diet Coke is Sacral because there’s nothing in it. It’s a nothing product. But people like it better than the original.
- Negative space. Alienation.
- “You can be anything you want to be”
- “You can save yourself”
- Fairy tales
- tiffani-hypothesis Alienation is a requirement to fully detach from the family unity the teenager was brought up in. So they can re-attach, but consciously this time. This is why teenagers with the best families still need a lot of alone time. They “come back” and bond with their parents again once they become young adults.
- It’s like how the internet is really a catalyst for this “reveal” of the truths underling society. Same with COVID. It’s accelerated how fast out problems are revealed, our awareness of them.
- Sacral structure is “virtual” in nature.
- Teenagers have a fractured identity: they have their real identity which they have in day-to-day life, and a virtual one which they have in another space, such as online or within a certain community or with another person.
- A teenager might be locked in their room, pouring their heart out and forming a deep bond with someone online, but neglecting the bond with their family.
- Relates to the concept of a ghost: something that lingers or travels without being tangible.
- Trying on “virtual identities”, like dressing up as goths, punks, etc. It’s all aesthetic, but it means something to them. Contrast with the young adult, who is deciding whether to be e.g. a mortician or an investment banker, not playing dress-up anymore but actually doing the thing.
- In the Sacral age, we all participate in different identities and ideologies: I’m Black, I’m Queer, a Trump supporter, a truck driver, etc. But these are virtual. We all participate in a real ideology, that of performing labour to earn money in exchange for goods of services. That of capitalism.
- Virtual identities are real, but they are not strong enough to supplant the real underlying identity.
- How we measure the year is very Sacral.
- 2023. 2023 years since what? Since the birth of Jesus Christ, but we never think about it. This important signal about the roots of our society is right in our faces, like a ghost, but we ignore it as if it’s not there.
- We “officially” use C.E. “common era” as a way to distance ourselves from the original “A.D.”, which literally translates to “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ”. We’re trying on this virtual meaning, but it doesn’t replace the real meaning underneath.