A graduate student analyzes the career conflict of Farhan Qureshi in Three…

Concept

James Marcia refined Erikson’s account of adolescent identity by defining an identity status through two independent dimensions: exploration — actively questioning and trying out alternative roles, values and careers — and commitment — having settled on a definite direction. Crossing the two dimensions yields four statuses, so a status is fixed by answering two questions in order: has the person explored, and has the person committed?

Applying it to this question

Farhan’s engineering career was fixed for him by his father before he was old enough to weigh any alternative, and he carried that plan through school and into college without ever examining it or the possibilities he cared about. The commitment dimension is therefore already filled in while the exploration dimension is still empty, and that combination is exactly the profile of Identity Foreclosure. It is this inherited, unexamined commitment that he is attempting to break away from when he finally asks to leave engineering for wildlife photography.

Cross-check: why the other three statuses do not describe his starting point

• Psychosocial Moratorium needs exploration to be under way with commitment held open. Farhan starts with the commitment already fixed, so this describes the searching phase he moves into once he begins questioning the plan, not the state he is leaving.

• Identity Diffusion needs both dimensions to be empty — no search and no direction at all. Farhan’s settled engineering track fills the commitment dimension, so his starting point cannot be diffusion.

• Identity Achievement needs the commitment to have been reached through the person’s own completed exploration. Farhan’s commitment arrived ready-made from his father, with no search of his own behind it.

Hence the identity status Farhan Qureshi is attempting to break away from is Identity Foreclosure: a firm commitment absorbed from a parent without any personal exploration to support it.