Chitra, SKalamani, S2017-04-072017-04-072016https://ir.avinuty.ac.in/handle/avu/2916in psychological terms, identity formation employs a process of simultaneous reflection and observation, a process taking place on all levels of mental functioning, by which the individual judges himself in the light of what he perceives to be the way which others judge him in comparison to themselves and to a typology significant to them: while he judges their way of judging him in the light of how he perceives himself in comparison to them and to types that have become relevant to him. This process is, luckily, and necessarily, for the most part unconscious except where inner conditions and outer circumstances combine to aggravate a painful or elated, “identity consciousness”. (Erik H. Erikson 22-23)