Identity Development Models

A field guide to the ~20 named identity-development models covered in the Week 2 lecture — organized by domain (racial/ethnic, gender/feminist, sexual orientation, transgender, spiritual/faith) so you can quickly tell parallel models apart. This is lecture-only content: no paired textbook chapter, so treat it as a map of the models, not a citation source.

MCPY 615, Week 2 lecture Lecture-only — no textbook pairing yet
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Core Concepts

Before the named models
Cultural identity
How firmly a person's sense of self is grounded in their culture, cultural background, and how they perceive others perceiving that culture — forms early and keeps developing across the whole lifespan.
Social identity
The slice of self-concept that comes specifically from group membership, plus the emotional weight attached to belonging to that group — narrower than cultural identity as a whole.
Acculturation Model (Berry, 1992)
Sorts acculturation outcomes — Assimilation, Separation, Integration, Marginalization — along two axes: whether someone keeps or lets go of their own cultural identity, and whether they accept or refuse the host culture.
Racial identity development
The move from not noticing/naming race at all toward active racial awareness and self-identification.
Ethnic identity development
The ongoing negotiation of how much a given ethnicity actually belongs to the individual — shaped in part by how others categorize them from outside.
Spirituality vs. faith
Often used interchangeably, but distinct: spirituality is a search for meaning, transcendence, and purpose; faith is the process of actually making that meaning.
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Racial & Ethnic Identity Models

Helms' People of Color Identity Model

  1. Conformity — prefers dominant cultural values, uncomfortable around own group
  2. Dissonance — conflicted between new experiences and prior self-concept
  3. Immersion/Emersion — idealizes own group, devalues Whiteness; guilt/shame/anger surface
  4. Internalization — self-defines by internal criteria, can respond objectively to Whites
  5. Integrative Awareness — values collective identity, sees solidarity across oppressed groups

Helms' White Racial Identity Model

Phase 1 — Abandonment of Racism

  1. Contact — denial that race is even relevant
  2. Disintegration — confusion
  3. Reintegration — racist beliefs, feelings of superiority

Phase 2 — Defining a Non-Racist White Identity

  1. Pseudo-Independent — rationalized tolerance of others
  2. Immersion/Emersion — actively challenges Whiteness
  3. Autonomy — secure, inclusive, no felt superiority

Helms' Racial Interaction Theory

How counselor/client racial-identity strata interact

  • Parallel — congruent, tension-avoidant communication
  • Regressive — higher-power person has the less complex ego status
  • Progressive — higher-power person has the more complex ego status

Ponterotto's Cultural Identity Development Model

Built for White counselor trainees

  1. Pre-exposure — unfamiliar with multicultural issues, comfortable with status quo
  2. Exposure — coursework-driven awareness of racism/diversity
  3. Zealot-Defensive — can swing pro-minority/anti-White
  4. Integration — balanced perspective, processes emotion into meaning

Poston's Biracial Identity Development Model

  1. Personal Identity — family-shaped sense of self
  2. Choice Group Categorization — forced to pick one ethnicity; can be a crisis
  3. Enmeshment/Denial — guilt/disloyalty/self-hatred from that forced choice
  4. Appreciation — exploring multiple heritages
  5. Integration — wholeness across integrated cultural identities

Kerwin & Ponterotto's Multiracial Identity Model

Organized by life stage, not resolution stage

  • Preschool — notices skin color/hair texture differences
  • Entry to school — often first forced to classify self
  • Preadolescence — aware of group-membership meanings
  • Adolescence — pressured toward one cultural identity
  • College/Young Adulthood — still single-identity, but expanding self
  • Adulthood — flexible, further cultural exploration

Root's Ecological Identity Development Model

Multiracial identity is situational, simultaneous, flexible, and variant across public/private domains — shaped by gender, politics, SES, family dynamics, sociopolitical history, and more, not just race.

02

Gender, Feminist & Sexual Identity Models

Feminist Identity: Downing & Roush (1985) vs. Hoffman (2006)

  • Passive Acceptance ↔ Unexamined Female Identity
  • Revelation ↔ Crisis
  • Embeddedness-Emanation ↔ Moratorium/Exploration
  • Synthesis ↔ Achieved Female Identity
  • Active Commitment ↔ (no Hoffman equivalent listed)

Cass's Homosexual Identity Formation Model

  1. Identity Confusion — first awareness that the identity may apply to oneself
  2. Identity Comparison — tentative commitment, partial accept/reject
  3. Identity Tolerance — seeks out other sexual minorities
  4. Identity Acceptance — sense of normalcy established
  5. Identity Pride — strong commitment + activism, not yet fully integrated
  6. Identity Synthesis — fully integrated with other self-dimensions

Coming Out: Coleman vs. Troiden

  • Pre-Coming Out ↔ Sensitization
  • Coming Out ↔ Identity Confusion
  • Exploration ↔ Identity Assumption
  • First Relationships ↔ Commitment
  • Integration ↔ (no Troiden equivalent listed)

McCarn & Fassinger's Inclusive Model (1996)

Individual-level and group-level tracks run in parallel, not always in sync

  1. Awareness
  2. Exploration
  3. Deepening Commitment
  4. Internalization & Synthesis

Weinberg, Williams & Pryor's Bisexual Identity Model

  1. Initial Confusion / Finding & Applying Labels — unsettled attraction to both sexes
  2. Settling into Identity — emerging self-acceptance
  3. Continued Uncertainty — driven by society's low tolerance, not personal doubt alone

Devor's Transsexual Identity Formation (14 stages)

Runs Abiding Anxiety → Identity Confusion re: assigned gender/sex → Identity Comparisons re: assigned gender/sex → Discovery → Confusion re: trans identity → Comparisons re: trans identity → Tolerance → Delay before acceptance → Acceptance → Delay before transition → Transition → Acceptance of post-transition identity → Integration → Pride.

de Vries's Intersectionality Model (2015)

Grounded in feminist theory + Black feminist activism; names 12 social positions shaping transgender-people-of-color experience: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Class, Nationality, Ability, Language, Religion, Culture, Ethnicity, Body Size, Age.

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Spiritual & Faith Identity Models

Spero's Development of Religious Transformations (lecture-sourced)

  1. Symbiosis — child sees God as purely need-meeting/protective
  2. Differentiation — adolescent, weighs other viewpoints against own practice
  3. Practicing — growing confidence, deeper faith explored
  4. Rapprochement — self-acceptance + individual responsibility, in relation to God

Genia's Development of Growth

  1. Egocentric Faith — seeks relief from anxiety/fear via God's favor
  2. Dogmatic — strict rule-following for reward, community affiliation matters
  3. Transitional Faith — examines beliefs, privileges introspection
  4. Reconstructed Internalized Faith — wrestles with doubt
  5. Transcendent Faith — universal truth, tolerance, celebration of life

Poll & Smith's Model of Spiritual Identity

Based on a sense of self in relation to God. (Only this single line was captured from the source — no further stage content exists to report.)

Named but not captured (title-only slides)

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Clinical Takeaways

This page is lecture-only. Several model slides (listed above) had graphic/SmartArt content that didn't extract as text — only the model name and cited theorist/year are confirmed for those. No stage names or definitions are asserted for them here or in the matching quiz. A broken video link was also cited in the source ("www.youtube/2m0rJHx4OVU", missing ".com") — not usable as printed.