Essay plan

How is identity psychoanalytically constructed and formed in society? What effects have these processes had upon your own identity?

Identity is something everyone feels they need in order to seperate themselves from the rest of society to be consider original or different. However the process of creating an identity is one that is quite dominantly influenced by the media and thus making certain aspects of ones identity, possibly affecting the way they live their lives.

Oxford dictionary definition- identity- the quality or condition of being a specific person or thing.
Oxford dictionary definition- psychoanalysis- a therapeutic method of treating mental disorders by investigating and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind.

• News reports that repeatedly mention the positives and negatives of a community affects the way individuals from those communities construct their identites perhaps because it seems like the ways they in particularly should be living their lives.
• Stereotyping in society can affect you as an individual to thnm start living up to those stereotypes because it is what people think of you. (sometimes whether they are positive or negative)
• Historic events that affect the mental state of a society and its communites. E.g. personal effects as a young, black man when thiking of descrimination against my family generation before that include my parents and grangparents.
• Clothing that we where can represent our identities. My wearing baggy clothing, trainers, rocawear etc illustrate the hip-hop genre that is culturally consider a black genre of music. I as many others in my demographic chose to wear these things as a sence of belonging and show a particular aspect to our own identity, or atleast what we want other people to think.
• Rap music and the ways it can appeal and identify with one using anecdotal evidence and experiences.
• Identity affects the way people think in terms of the way they think. With different identities comes varied perspectives to situations, politics and so on. By having an idnetity creates barriers sometimes between people and sometimes segrgates.
• Politics- the political parties we follow label our beliefs and prejugde as the kind of person we are, affecting our identities in the eyes of others.
• Where you may have grown up all add to the generalisations of who we are. (location)
• The use of passports and driver's licences is the governments way of keeping track of people's identities and enforces this lw or the rest of society as a way of confirming to others too. In a sense they are restrictive to basic information such as: name, DOB and and a photo. They don't say the personality someone has or what they stand for etc. Basically we are numbers on a system.

References:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4545657.stm

Moral panics- Stanley Cohen

Essential Word Dictionary-AS/ A-level Media Sudies, (2005)