Trustworthiness The Traumatic Experiences as the Hindrance of Charlie’s Personality Development in Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Psychosocial Analysis.

psychosexual stages beyond child-hood, Erikson places more emphasis on both social and historical influences.” Therefore, the ability of individuals to integrate with society and history in their environment will determine whether they will grow to have a healthy personality or not. The society will accept individuals based on the way they react, behave, and think about things in accordance with the standard adopted in that environment. In addition, in his theory, he emphasizes that there are eight stages of human personality development through which individuals pass. Erikson puts the term ‘versus’ to link the two opposing conflicts in each stage: the positive ‘versus’ the negative. Each stage has its own role, and the outcome of the earlier stage will contribute to the skill of individuals in handling the later stage. The task of individuals is to make a balanced outcome in every stage. A healthy personality can be indicated from the result, whether individuals can make a balanced outcome or not. Identity vs. Role confusion is the fifth stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development, and it is the most crucial period than the other stages. Individuals will face the fifth stage when they become adolescents. Adolescents are demanded to achieve the sense of identity as the basic strength at this stage. Thus, individuals need to explore a sense of identity in this stage, which is called as psychosocial moratorium. Erikson 1968: 156 says that psychosocial moratorium is the time when individuals have experimentation to find out the way they can fit in the society and be recognized as part of them. However, there are some problems that occur during this stage; which are 1 identity diffusion, 2 identity foreclosure, and 3 negative identity. The attainment in dealing with this stage is indicated by the readiness of individuals to have larger interaction and communication in their society. On the other hand, if adolescents fail to accomplish the basic strength in this stage and experience the problems in their psychosocial moratorium, they will suffer from the role confusion. In this study, the researcher only observes one leading character that is identified as a person named Charlie, who fails to achieve the sense of identity in his life. His unhealthy personality can be seen from his failure in handling the problems in moratorium as mentioned previously. To scrutinize the research on Charlie related to his failure, the researcher separates this discussion into the category below:

1. Identity Diffusion

Identity diffusion is the first conflict in psychosocial moratorium, which refers to the inability of individuals in figuring out a sense of identity. Erikson 1968: 171 mentions that identity diffusion is always accompanied by a acute upset, b the inability to concentrate, c the excessive self-awareness, and d the inability to make a decision. All of the disruptions usually occur to adolescents who live in an insufficient family or an environment that does not give them positive influences for their psychological development. As the consequence, individuals will lose their social play in the environment around them.