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: