Psychosocial Moratorium

The psychosocial moratorium is the social arrangement that makes identity formation possible. It is a period of protected exploration during which the adolescent is permitted, even encouraged, to try on different identities, to experiment with different roles and ideologies, to test different visions of her future without being held to adult standards of performance and commitment. Erikson insisted that the moratorium is not a luxury or an indulgence but a developmental necessity. Identity cannot be chosen from a menu; it must be discovered through the kind of open-ended exploration that only the moratorium permits. When the moratorium is compressed — when the adolescent is pressured into premature commitment — she develops what James Marcia called a foreclosed identity: a commitment adopted wholesale rather than forged through genuine exploration.