The formation of identity is never a solitary endeavour. From our earliest moments, we develop a sense of who we are through relationship—first with primary caregivers, then with siblings, peers, and the broader cultural world. Yet this process of coming to selfhood while remaining in relationship with others presents profound psychological challenges, particularly when differences of culture, family structure, or early attachment experiences complicate the developmental landscape.
The twin paradox of separation and connection
Psychoanalytic theory recognizes that healthy identity formation requires negotiating the tension between connection and separation. We need others to mirror and recognise us, yet we must also differentiate ourselves to develop authentic selfhood. This paradox becomes particularly complex in relationships characterised by intense early bonding, such as twin relationships, where the boundaries between self and other are initially blurred.
Dorothy Burlingham’s pioneering work on twins revealed how these individuals must develop attachments to both mother and twin simultaneously, creating unique communication patterns and what she termed ‘twin transference’— the transfer of feelings and experiences between siblings. This research illuminated how early relational templates profoundly shape our capacity for later intimate relationships, particularly our ability to tolerate both closeness and separateness.
The challenge extends beyond twin relationships to any early environment where merger and differentiation are complicated. When primary relationships involve inconsistent caregiving, cultural displacement, or family structures that don’t provide clear models for healthy separation, individuals may struggle throughout life with what Juliet Mitchell calls the ‘law of the mother’ —learning to manage the simultaneous drives toward fusion and annihilation that characterize intense relationships.
Cultural homelessness and multiple selves
For those who grow up between cultures, what Ruth Hill Useem termed ‘third culture kid’, identity formation involves additional layers of complexity. David Henderson’s concept of ‘cultural homelessness’ described not merely geographic displacement, but the psychological experience of living between cultural systems without complete belonging in any. This creates what he calls ‘multiple egos’ as different aspects of self that develop in relation to different cultural contexts.
Salman Akhtar’s work on immigration and identity outlined how cultural transitions force a ‘third individuation’, which indicates a reworking of identity across drives and affects, concepts of space and time, social affiliations, and intrapsychic organisation. This process involves mourning the loss of singular cultural identity while integrating diverse cultural elements into a coherent sense of self.
Rather than viewing this as pathology, we might understand multicultural identity formation as requiring particular psychological skills: comfort with ambiguity, flexibility in code-switching between contexts, and resilience in the face of belonging nowhere completely while participating everywhere partially. These capacities can become sources of strength, fostering empathy for others’ experiences of difference and facility in navigating complex social environments.
The intersubjective third
Jessica Benjamin’s concept of the ‘third’ offers a framework for understanding how identity develops – not through isolation, but through intersubjective recognition. Rather than seeing development as a process of separation from others, Benjamin emphasises the creation of a shared psychological space where both self and other can exist as separate subjects while remaining in meaningful relationships.
This ‘co-created third’ emerges from genuine encounter between individuals who can recognise each other’s separate subjectivity while creating something together that transcends either person’s individual contribution. It requires what she calls ‘mutuality’: the capacity to see others as separate centres of experience rather than extensions of our own needs or projections of our own fears.
The implications extend far beyond individual development to broader social questions about how we navigate differences in increasingly diverse societies. When differences of ethnicity, gender, class, or culture activate primitive fears of annihilation or merger, we may resort to defensive strategies— either attempting to eliminate difference through assimilation or creating rigid boundaries that prevent genuine encounter.
Difference as creative potential
Psychoanalytic thinking suggests that difference, rather than representing a threat to be managed, can become a source of creative potential. When we can tolerate the anxiety that difference initially provokes, we open possibilities for growth that would not exist in relationships characterised by sameness or merger.
This requires a capability to hold the discomfort of difference across relationships, tolerating not fully understanding another’s experience while remaining curious and engaged, rather than retreating into familiar categories or defensive assumptions.
The contemporary world presents unprecedented opportunities for encounter across difference alongside unprecedented anxieties about cultural change, migration, and shifting social structures. Psychoanalytic perspectives suggest that our capacity to create genuinely inclusive societies depends not on eliminating difference, but on developing psychological and social structures that can contain the anxiety difference initially provokes, while fostering the creative potential that emerges from authentic encounters between different ways of being human.
Identity formation then becomes, not about achieving a fixed sense of self, but about developing the capacity to remain authentically oneself while genuinely encountering others—thus creating spaces where difference enriches, rather than threatens, our shared humanity.
Shiraz El Showk is a Training Member of the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP) and a registered Training member of the UKCP, She is experienced in Psychodynamic counselling and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy work with individuals, on both long and short term basis. Shiraz works from our Brighton and Hove practice, Lewes practice and online.
Further reading by Shiraz El Showk –
Reflections on training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist: discovering the third space
The therapeutic journey – a pilgrimage to the soul?
Surviving family festivities: a psychoanalytic journey through the twelve days of Christmas
Parents – the ghosts and angels of our past
Is an AI therapist as good as a human one?
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