Identity Crisis in Shandana Minhas's Survival Tips for Lunatics (2014): An Eriksonian Reading

Abstract

This study examines how characters' sense of identity, belonging, and social position is challenged and reshaped in Shandana Minhas's Survival Tips for Lunatics (2014). The main objective of the study is to investigate representations of identity crisis using Erikson's (1968) theory of identity. A qualitative research design is adopted, and selected passages from the novel are analysed through close textual reading. Erikson's (1968) theory of identity provides the main theoretical framework. The analysis focuses on how experiences of loss, extinction, violence, and displacement disturb characters' relationships with self, family, community, and homeland. The study argues that these disruptions destabilise individual and collective identities but also encourage resistance, adaptation, and reconstruction of the self. The study contributes to psychosocial literary criticism and the study of contemporary Pakistani literature, particularly children's and young adult fiction.

Keywords: Identity Crisis, Erikson, Psychosocial Development, Literary Criticism, Belonging, Identity, Survival, Shandana Minhas, Survival Tips for Lunatics